I had the warnings at least, some wing panels,
but I didn't hear if we had any cuts or not.
Where do you sit?
What?
Where do you sit?
Where are you located?
Oh, we're in Madison.
Okay.
Good check.
The Great Bay Area is
seeing a whooping cough outbreak with the County Health Department investigating more
than 65 cases of the bacterial disease pertussis since the beginning of April. It can be especially
dangerous and infants. Vaccines for pertussis are part of the regular schedule for children
with boosters for adults, but rates for required vaccinations have been dropping. State data
shows in the last school year 10 percent of school students were not meeting requirements.
Joining us with more is Katrina Nordig, Brown County Deputy Public Health Officer. Thanks
very much for being here. Thanks for having me. So what kind of an increase in cases in
Brown County is this of pertussis compared to normal years? Well, so for example, here
in Brown County, we have 13 confirmed cases, mostly situated in the month of April. And
for last year we had one for the entire year. So we did see an outbreak this season. As you
mentioned, we have investigated over 65 cases. So that means that we reach out to those with
suspected cases and do contact tracing, contact investigation, some education, but then also
work with confirmed cases. And for example, institutions to provide education on what
to expect and how to encourage people to seek treatment or stay home if they're feeling
ill. Because how dangerous is whooping cough, especially for babies? Well, moving cough
is also known as pertussis is caused by the bacteria. It's very contagious. It's spread
through the air when a person with whooping cough coughs, sneezes, talks, sings. And it's
especially dangerous for infants as they have underdeveloped airways, potentially haven't
been vaccinated. And about a third to a calf of those infants can be hospitalized due
to complications from their pertussis. We also see dangers when you are looking at people
who have immunocompromised or pregnant persons. As we've discussed, vaccinations for whooping
cough are required, starting in infancy with boosters, even for adults. What are you seeing
in terms of a drop off in people getting these required vaccinations?
Well, we have seen a slight decrease statewide in vaccine completion and uptake anywhere
from around 2 to 5%. But here in Brown County, we are meeting our general benchmarks and
also have been across the state strategizing around how to catch people up. So people may
have felt behind in their vaccination during COVID. And so we are strategically planning
how to catch people up. We have targeted vaccination clinics, education and promotion, and we're
working with community partners to also have vaccination clinics out in the population.
Is there any sense that lower rates of vaccinations follow critical messaging around the COVID
vaccine in recent years? Well, we have to wonder how much of that small decline in uptake is
due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people not being able to go in to their providers, people falling
behind on just general appointments. And also maybe some questions remaining about the actual
COVID-19 vaccination. But we encourage people, please reach out to your medical provider and ask
any questions you have. You can ask them where your vaccination status is at for your loved ones.
You can also check online on the Wisconsin immunization registry to see what vaccines you have
and talk to your provider about vaccines you may need.
Meanwhile, there are new child vaccine requirements from the State Department of Health for men
and jitis and chickenpox. Do you expect that to be controversial in any way?
Those recommendations actually aren't new. They were presented last year by the CDC.
They were suspended until recently. And those recommendations are for children entering child
care. They're required to demonstrate that they have had the chickenpox by a clinical provider.
So it used to be that parents could testify that their child had actually had chickenpox.
And now that the requirements for child care is that a clinical provider needs to
include that in their statement. But then when you're talking about the
new school requirements for meningococcal, those require that students entering the seventh grade
receive that vaccination. And then again, another booster when they're entering the 12th year. So
CDC has recommended those DHS review those and have implemented those into the requirements
for school. So what are other disease outbreaks of concern in unvaccinated or under vaccinated
populations right now? Sure. Well, we have recently heard about some measles concerns and even some
cases reported cases that are reported nationally. And we did have one case reported in Wisconsin.
What we know about measles is that it's highly, highly contagious. It's one of the most
contagious diseases. And so therefore we're very concerned about the spread. We also know that
the vaccine is highly effective. So if you don't have the measles vaccine, talk to your health care
provider. If you think you may have symptoms of the measles, reach out to your health care
provider immediately. And if you can keep in contact potentially with some of the measles,
you can contact your health provider immediately and they can follow recommend or they can
provide recommendations on next steps for you. All right. Well, Katrina Nordic, thank you for
your work running all this down and providing the public with the information and education.
Thank you.
Yes. Well, these are easy days compared to COVID, I guess, huh?
COVID was certainly interesting. I'm an epidemiologist, so I say I couldn't have been in a better place.
It was wonderful to be in public health and watch it unfold. We did so many different things.
We did, of course, contact tracing and education, but also like we got to enter, we got to create
and run a housing program for people who didn't have a place to stay when they had to isolate.
We got to do at home vaccination clinics. So we got to do a lot. We got to
stretch a lot of new muscles and learned a lot, but it's great to be back to our regular programming.
Yeah. Well, and all the work that you did then, may it hold you in good stead if something like
that comes around again. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Katrina. Have a good weekend.
Thanks. Appreciate it. Okay. Bye. Bye.