Respiratory virus season is upon us, those fall and winter months when the flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and the common cold typically spread throughout the U.S. But in the current post-COVID-pandemic era, a veteran bacterial illness has spurred an outbreak: whooping cough.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had preliminarily documented more than 17,600 whooping cough infections nationwide as of Oct. 5—more than four times the nearly 4,000 infections recorded at this time last year. So what’s causing the 342% increase?
