Three cases of whooping cough were reported to Island County Health Department last Friday, but officials believe they actually mark the final end of an outbreak that made big news this summer.
“They’ve been coughing for two-and-a-half months now, so they are not new cases,” said Katie Hicks, a communicable disease coordinator with Island County Public Health.
In all, the department reported 96 confirmed cases of the ailment, technically known as pertussis.
Hicks gave a presentation on the summertime outbreak during the Island County Board of Health meeting Monday. She used statistics and graphs to show how and where the epidemic grew.
Hicks explained that the information gleaned from the outbreak illustrates the importance of vaccinations, as well as education. The department sometimes had difficulty getting infected people to stay home for the recommended five days.
“Not everyone followed the five-day recommendation, which is the reason this kept on going,” she said.
It turns out that the whooping cough epidemic started in Oak Harbor, but took hold on South Whidbey.
The county received reports of a couple of pertussis-infected Oak Harbor students and a senior citizen in May. Hicks said officials couldn’t find any commonalities in the cases, so they didn’t consider it a trend. They sent letters to the schools. Health-care experts predicted that the end of the school year would prevent it from spreading.
But they received reports on five more cases in mid-June, followed by 18 more by the end of the month.
At that point, Hicks said the department alerted the news media to the spreading disease. The number of new cases peaked in the second week of July, with 23 reported, but the reports kept coming all summer.
In all, 48 of the cases occurred on South Whidbey, 30 on Central Whidbey and 18 on North Whidbey. Five children in one family were coughing for more than two weeks before they were diagnosed.
Two of the cases involved children under one year old. One of the babies ended up at Children’s Hospital in Seattle, Hicks said, but he’s doing OK now.
Only 17 of the sick people were adults.
Hicks said the number of cases matches up with the vaccination rates of the areas. On South Whidbey, 12 percent of students have either been exempted or are not compliant with vaccinations. On Central Whidbey, the rate is 5.7 percent and on North Whidbey it’s just 3 percent.
Roger Case, the county’s health officer, explained that state law allows parents to exempt their children from vaccinations for either religious or non-religious reasons.
The decision not to vaccinate is largely a matter of a “personal belief system” for parents, said Health Department Director Keith Higman.
Hicks said the epidemic taxed the resources of the department, but the team was able to make it work — though there was some hair-tearing involved. Every new case was investigated within 24 hours. They needed to find out where the patient may have been exposed, who the patient may have exposed and when the symptoms began.
“We asked them firmly to stay home for five days and take antibiotics,” Hicks explained.
The isolation is to prevent the further spread of the contagious disease. The problem was that many of the ill children didn’t want to miss out on summer activities and didn’t feel that sick.
“It turns out that summertime activities are way more fun than school activities,” Hicks said.
That’s why, Hicks said, it’s important to inform citizens about disease transmission and the impact sick individuals can have on the community. While pertussis may not seem like a serious disease, it can be deadly to infants. It’s one of the leading causes of vaccine-preventable diseases worldwide.
“We tried to use the outbreak as a tool to educate,” she said.
And in order to continue the communication, Hicks said the department is updating its scattershot-style Web site with a simpler, easier-to-navigate version.
