CDC Team Investigates Local Pertussis
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) team is in Durango for several weeks investigating the possible reasons for an increase in the number of people testing positive for pertussis (also called whooping cough). La Plata County had 101 cases of reported pertussis from December 2008 through July 31, 2009. Many of the cases reported having mild symptoms without the “whooping” type cough that is often a symptom of pertussis. The cases in La Plata County account for a significant proportion of pertussis cases reported in Colorado for 2009. Therefore, San Juan Basin Health Department has been working closely with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on this on-going investigation.
Due to the unusual number of cases, atypical symptoms, difficulty in accurately diagnosing pertussis, and the fact that cases continued being reported, a request was submitted to CDC by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on August 7th for help investigating this cough illness circulating in our community.
The four-member CDC team will be looking at past cases and newly reported cases. They will be re-interviewing individuals who had laboratory-confirmed pertussis looking particularly at the symptoms each person had. Additionally, the team is working with several local health care provider groups to ask patients who are seeking care for a new cough related illness to participate in the investigation. Local providers at the sites will obtain nasal specimens and blood samples from these individuals to send to the CDC Lab for further testing.
The CDC investigation will hopefully result in determining the cause of this cough illness in our community. This could then enable our local health care providers to better evaluate patients with cough-related illnesses. It would also assist in identifying potential strategies to control future outbreaks of this disease in our community.
For more information about pertussis, visit www.cdc.gov/Features/Pertussis/.
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