The whooping cough has come back to California in full force, with the state confirming 9,935 cases by the end of last month, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Contril and Prevention. The outbreak has been deemed as the state's worst in 70 years.
With nearly 1,000 more cases reported than the state's last major whooping cough outbreak in 2010, the highly contagious bacterial disease is considered to be cyclical because cases peak every three to five years, ABC News reported.
"The last time a series of outbreaks occurred across the country, California started the parade," said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. "And so this is a harbinger we are fearful of."
The disease, also known as pertussis, is known to especially attack infants by causing uncontrollable, violent coughing. Even though it can be cured by a vaccine called TDaP, children are not required to take the vaccine until they are 2 months old.
So instead, CDC recommends pregnant women to take it and help pass along the immunity to their unborn children, according to the New York Daily News.
But despite the vaccine being very effective, about 50 percent of all infected children under a year old need to be hospitalized, and up to 2 percent of them end up dying, Schaffner said.
Developed in 1940s, the whooping cough "developed a sour reputation for side effects, including high fever, swelling of the lymph nodes and others," according to ABC News.
"So scientists developed a new vaccine that was lumped in with the tetanus and diphtheria vaccines to make TDaP. The new vaccine effectively prevents whooping cough but its effectiveness weakens over about 5 years, making the population more vulnerable to the bacteria's cyclical nature without regular boosters," Schaffner said.
The latest outbreak in California is a sign of what's to come until a better vaccine can be developed, said Dr. Jeff Duchin, who also chairs the public health committee for the Infectious Disease Society of America.
"This is a new reality for us in public health," he said, adding that the most important requirement was for pregnant women to receive vaccinations.
