Shocking new data emerges as whooping cough cases in New York City surge as unvaccinated immigrants continue to flood into the city.
So far this year, the city has seen a 169% increase in cases of the deadly disease compared to the same period in 2023 and a nearly 500% increase compared to the number of cases at this time in 2019. Discovered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Statewide, cases of the highly contagious respiratory disease are up more than 300% this year compared to last year and 214% compared to the same period in 2019, data shows.
“Where vaccination rates are low, there’s going to be whooping cough outbreaks, and that could potentially trigger an epidemic,” said Bill Hammond, a senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Public Policy Center.
Nationwide, there has been a 282% increase in whooping cough cases so far this year compared to last year.
“Vaccinating children from all communities and immigrants should be a top priority to prevent this epidemic from worsening,” Hammond added. The disease is caused by the Bordetella pertussis bacteria and spreads when an infected person coughs or sneezes during close contact with another person. It can be deadly to infants, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems.
Mayor Eric Adams said last month that more than 200,000 migrants have passed through New York City since mid-2022, and 63,900 are currently living in city-run shelters.
Experts told The Washington Post that shelters are often cramped and poorly ventilated, creating the perfect conditions for whooping cough to spread.
“Any congregate setting where vaccination is not optimized is at risk for a whooping cough outbreak,” said Matt Harris, a Northwell physician who specializes in pediatric emergency medicine.
For example, there were outbreaks of the disease at a children’s camp in upstate New York and at a US military barracks this summer because “it’s highly contagious and people are living in close contact with each other,” Harris said.
Similar situations are common in the city’s migrant shelters, where “we don’t even know the vaccination status of migrants,” Harris said.
“Even if you’ve been vaccinated, you can still get whooping cough,” especially in confined spaces, he noted.
New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan warned last year that half of immigrants entering New York have not been vaccinated against the contagious and potentially deadly poliovirus, and many are coming from or passing through countries with high rates of infectious tuberculosis.
“Some of the most common outbreak countries have low vaccination coverage for certain diseases, for example polio vaccination coverage hovers around 50 percent,” Vasan wrote in a 2023 letter to doctors and health workers.
a 2017 Survey The study, by researchers from the Italian Public Health Agency and the World Health Organization, found that migrants often have low vaccination rates in their home countries and often refuse to be vaccinated or have no access to vaccines when they arrive in their new countries.
A city health department spokesman said the department does not know how many immigrants entering the city have not been vaccinated.
“The best way to prevent whooping cough is to follow proper vaccination guidelines,” a state health department spokesman said.
