More babies die from extremely contagious infectious disease as vaccination rates fall

Two infants have died from a vaccine-preventable disease in Louisiana — just after the surgeon general said he would no longer promote mass vaccination campaigns.

The children died from whooping cough, a highly infectious bacterial disease causing minutes-long coughing fits that leave patients struggling to breathe.

It can be prevented with a vaccine called Tdap, given in five doses between the ages of two months and four to six years, but this vaccine's uptake is declining in Louisiana and nationwide. 

In the 2023 to 2024 school year, 92.3 percent of kindergartners got the vaccine, which protects against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (whooping cough). This rate is below the 95 percent experts say is needed to stop the disease from spreading.

At least five people have died from whooping cough in the US in the last six months, including a child under five in Washington state — its first since 2011.

And infections are surging nationwide, with 6,600 reported so far this year — or four times the number recorded at the same time in 2024.

Last year, there were 35,000 cases of whooping cough in the US, the most since 2014, while at least a dozen people were reported to have died from the infection.

The US is now battling against spiraling outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases amid a surge in vaccine skepticism following the Covid pandemic.

In West Texas, there is a major outbreak of measles — the most infectious disease in the world — which can also be prevented with a vaccine.

More than 481 cases and 56 hospitalizations have been reported so far, the most nationwide since 2019, while two people have died, including a six-year-old girl.

Whooping cough causes an infection that begins as a runny nose, sneezing and mild cough or fever.

But by the second week of the infection, patients suffer from uncontrollable coughing fits that last for minutes, leave them struggling to breathe and turn their face red or blue.

Infants are particularly vulnerable to the disease, which kills about two percent of babies under a year old who are infected.

Doctors can treat the disease using antibiotics, but patients who catch it are also at risk of life-long complications, including brain damage leading to lagging development, vision problems and chronic lung issues.

The best way to prevent the disease is to get the Tdap vaccine.

It is offered to all children in a five-dose course at the ages of two months, four months, six months, 15 to 18 months and four to six years old, with a booster between the ages of 10 and 11 years.

The vaccine is 98 percent effective at preventing whooping cough.

Few further details were released about the Louisiana patients, except that the patients were the first deaths in the state since 2018.

Fatalities from the disease have also been reported this year in a child in South Dakota and in an adult in Idaho. Last year, there were about a dozen fatalities.

They came after the state's surgeon general said last month he would no longer promote mass vaccination campaigns and said vaccination was an individual decision.

In a memo, Dr Ralph L Abraham wrote the state would 'encourage each patient to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination with their provider' but would 'no longer promote mass vaccination'.

Whooping cough used to cause 200,000 infections in the US every year and about 9,000 deaths among children.

After the vaccine was rolled out in the 1940s, cases dropped markedly — but have slowly crept up amid lowering vaccination rates.