Health officials confirmed five cases of whooping cough among members of a family that resulted in at least one hospitalization in Hawaii.
“The family had traveled from the United States mainland and stayed at a hotel accommodation on Oahu,” the Hawaii Department of Health said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that officials have “identified no close contacts after the family’s arrival in Hawaii.”
It’s not clear when the family arrived in Oahu, and it’s not clear if they were contagious on an airline.
The department said that each case of whooping cough, known as pertussis, impacted individuals who were not vaccinated. It’s now working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is going to “notify travelers who were exposed” but warned it’s a “highly contagious respiratory infection.”
The last whooping cough case to occur in Hawaii was in March 23, according to the department, adding: “In the past five years from 2019-2023, there have been 89 confirmed and probable pertussis cases reported in Hawaii.”
The Department of Health said whooping cough, caused by a bacterial infection, is a “highly contagious respiratory infection caused by bacteria” that can cause coughing fits of up to 10 weeks or longer along with “a high-pitched ‘whoop’ sound when breathing in.”
“Whooping cough can lead to serious complications, especially in infants, such as pneumonia, dehydration, seizures, and brain damage. Infants may not cough at all,” the agency said, adding that “instead, they may have apnea (life-threatening pauses in breathing) or struggle to breathe.”
Whooping cough’s first symptoms generally appear 7 to 10 days after the initial infection, including a mild fever, runny nose and cough, which in typical cases gradually develops into a severe cough.
The agency said it recommends anyone in Hawaii see a doctor if they or their children are “coughing violently and rapidly,” having issues with breathing, or a fever.
According to the Mayo Clinic, deaths associated with whooping cough are considered rare and usually occur in infants and some younger children. Infants tend to be at risk because their breathing airways are too narrow, health authorities say.
Complications, the clinic says, among infants can include side effects such as cracked or bruised ribs, hernias, broken blood vessels in the skin, pneumonia, slowed or halted breathing, dehydration, weight loss, and seizures. Younger children “are at greatest risk of complications from whooping cough, they’re more likely to need treatment in a hospital,” it says, adding: “Complications can be life-threatening for infants younger than 6 months old.”
Those suffering from whooping cough might be recommended to take antibiotics to deal with the bacteria.
This week, officials in Washington state confirmed four cases of whooping cough linked to what they have described as a school outbreak in East Wenatchee, although the exact school wasn’t identified. Health officials also said they are investigating “several other suspected cases” in the area.
“We don’t want anybody to ignore symptoms because they think they didn’t possibly have any exposure,” an official told local media.
Meanwhile, a high school in Sussex County, New Jersey, confirmed one case of the bacterial infection among a “member of our community,” according to local reports. It’s not clear if the case involved a student, a teacher, or a parent.
Health officials in the United Kingdom recently said that whooping cough is currently at epidemic levels in England and Wales. Some 1,400 cases of the bacterial infection, known as the “100-day cough,” have been recorded since the start of this year, which is about a 24-fold increase since last year.
“The current data indicates the country is in an epidemic, mirroring the trend observed in other European and Asian countries,” a data analytics company, Airfinity, told The Telegraph.
There have been 1,416 recorded cases of the ‘100-day cough’ since the beginning of January, representing a 24-fold increase on the same period last year.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that in 2018, there were more than 151,000 cases of whooping cough around the world.