Community Corner

Gregoire Uses Emergency Funds to Slow Whooping Cough Epidemic

There have been 147 known cases of whooping cough in Pierce County this year. In 2011 there were 128 cases the entire year.

Gov. Chris Gregoire today has made emergency funds available to the state Department of Health to help curb the epidemic of whooping cough (pertussis) underway in Washington.

In addition, Gregoire is urging health care professionals to get vaccinated and vaccinate their patients, and she announced federal approval for health officials to re-direct some funds to buy several thousand doses of pertussis vaccine for adults.

Pierce County Councilmember Stan Flemming and other members of the Tacoma-Pierce County Board of Health received their Tdap vaccinations at yesterday’s meeting.

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In Gig Harbor, the and pharmacies are stocked with the vaccine.

Along with $210,000 in existing funds from the Department of Health, Gregoire is making $90,000 available from the governor’s emergency fund to strengthen public awareness efforts about the need for vaccination. Gregoire will keep access to the emergency fund open in the event the state needs to purchase additional vaccinations.

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Gregoire also announced that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has approved using federal funds designated for other immunizations to buy more than 27,000 doses of pertussis vaccine for adults who are uninsured or underinsured.

The state declared its one month ago today, and the number of cases have increased since.

As of April 10, there have been 3 students at Goodman Middle School diagnosed with pertussis, and two possible cases have been identified at Gig Harbor High School.

Latest numbers for Pierce County:

To date in 2012, there have been 147 confirmed cases of pertussis in Pierce County residents. In 2011 there were 128 cases the entire year, and in 2010 there were 84 cases.

There were 122 cases reported to the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department in the month of April. (The department is still awaiting confirmation on some of these cases, so this number is preliminary.)

The majority of the cases are in school-aged children.

No deaths have been reported in Pierce County thus far.

According to disease investigators at the Department of Health, 1,132 cases of whooping cough have been reported in the state through April 28—that’s compared to 117 more than the same time last year. There were 965 cases reported in all of 2011. The epidemic is on pace for as many as 3,000 cases in 2012.


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