Whooping Cough Is Surging. Do You Need Another Shot?

After a brief lull during the pandemic, whooping cough has bounced back, raising alarm among public health officials.

There have been more than 10,000 whooping cough cases in the United States so far this year, an unusually high number even by prepandemic standards, said Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University who has studied whooping cough, also called pertussis, for decades. A branch of the World Health Organization recently called on countries with high levels of spread, including the United States, to bolster surveillance of the illness and increase vaccination efforts.

Edwards said the surge was most likely caused by a combination of falling childhood vaccination rates and a lack of exposure to the disease during the pandemic. That exposure “reminds” the immun