Whooping cough cases jump 1400 last week
Chart showing distribution of whooping cough cases by state through June 9 2012 and the personal exemptions status of the state. Prepared by Charles Simmins. Click for a larger image.
Whooping cough cases in the United States jumped by at least 1,421 in the last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and several state health departments that are posting their own data. The data is for week 23, through June 9, 2012. Cases counts for the year are preliminary and will not be finalized for about 18 months.
The CDC reports 13,005 pertussis cases for 2012 in its week 23 MMWR. Minnesota is not included in the total because of computer reporting problems. Minnesota reports a total of 1,025 whooping cough cases on its department of Health website. Washington state reports a higher case count than the CDC at its Department of Health website, 2,325. Washington is the only state to declare an epidemic thus far.
Adding these, and several other minor correction, results in 14,219 whooping cough cases reported for 2012. This is more than double the pertussis cases reported for the same period in 2011. Four states are reporting over one thousand cases. Twenty-five states have over 100 pertussis cases. The corrected national total is 1,421 cases higher than last week’s corrected total.
| UNITED STATES | PE | 14,198 |
| WA | Y | 2,325 |
| WI | Y | 2,165 |
| NY | 1,143 | |
| MN | Y | 1,025 |
| IL | Y | 706 |
| PA | Y | 680 |
| TX | Y | 592 |
| AZ | Y | 410 |
| IA | 396 | |
| Other | 4,756 |
Twenty states allow a personal or philosophical exemption from immunizations. Illinois allows a religious exemption based on personal belief. These twenty-one states account for 71.7 percent of all reported cases of whooping cough this year. three of the four states with over one thousand pertussis cases allow a personal exemption. Of the top ten states with pertussis cases, seven are exemption states. Those seven alone account for 55.6 percent of all reported cases in 2012.
the attachments to this post:
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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2012 at 11:35 am and is filed under Original writing, Analysis, Medicine, Original writing, Original writing, Reporting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
