Whooping Cough Case Confirmed at Thompson Junior High

officials are warning parents at of a confirmed case of whooping cough.

The case was confirmed by the student’s physician Monday afternoon. The district sent out an email blast to parents with the Center for Disease Control guidelines for the highly contagious bacterial disease.

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is an infection of the respiratory system caused by bacteria, and spread by coughing or sneezing. Symptoms are like that of the common cold, with the cough getting stronger after two weeks. Cough medicine does not help with whooping cough.

Symptoms can last for more than two months, and the disease can be treated with antibiotics.

Children receive the whooping cough vaccine as infants and two booster shots, once in kindergarten and once in sixth grade, said Jill Accardo, District 308’s health coordinator. Students can receive exemptions for religious and medical reasons, and there are a few of those students at Thompson, Accardo said. The school nurse has contacted those parents directly.

The student will be allowed to return to school once he or she has been on antibiotics for five days, Accardo said.

“We sent out the email just to make people aware of the signs and symptoms,” she said. “This is certainly not an outbreak.”

Students at both Wolf’s Crossing and Lakewood Creek elementary schools contracted the disease last year, Accardo said.

So far this year, about 600 whooping cough cases have been reported in Illinois, with almost 75 percent of those reported among children under the age of 18. The majority of cases were among children between the ages of 7 and 12, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

For more information on whooping cough, check the CDC website.