Whooping cough concerns: Are your kids vaccinated?

It was too late for yet another infant in California, who recently died from the infection, also known as pertussis. That brings the total number of deaths this year to 10 in California alone. It comes amid the worst outbreak there in 60 years, according to health officials.

Since the beginning of the year, there have been nearly 6,000 confirmed, probably and suspected cases in California. All the deaths involve infants under 3-months-old. Nine were younger than 8-weeks-old and were too young to be vaccinated.

Here in New York, there have been about 479 cases of pertussis reported this year. Compare that to just 231 cases during that time period last year. The disease peaked 2004 with nearly 2,000 cases reported statewide. There have been no deaths reported in New York this year. There was one death of an infant in 2009.

Read the entire article here.

(Note from SaneVax: With all due respect, bacterial pneumonia (which is what pertussis is) can be caused by multiple types of bacteria. Pneumonia can also be caused by viruses. The more importand question is, ‘What is the cause of these cases of pneumonia?’)