Whooping Cough Outbreak Hits Harvard-Westlake

LOS ANGELES, CA — Thirty students at the private Harvard-Westlake School have become sickened with whooping cough in part of what health department officials say are three clusters of the outbreak scattered countywide.

The highly contagious illness appear to spreading among middle-schoolers and teens who share classrooms and carpools, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. The outbreak at Harvard-Westlake has spread across two campuses in Studio City and Beverly Crest. The trio of clusters prompted DPH to issue a health alert to pediatricians and other health care providers last week. Though the illness can be treated with antibiotics, it can be deadly to infants.

Harvard-Westlake School recently sent a notice to parents about the outbreak, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The public health agency said there were three clusters in different areas of the county, with a median 17 cases per cluster, but did not specify locations.

Harvard-Westlake's community health officer has been coordinating directly with the Department of Public Health and that agency is confident about the steps being taken to prevent further spread of the illness, according to a school spokesman.

Harvard-Westlake has taken proactive measures from extensive disinfecting to keeping kids with symptoms off campus until a doctor clears them, said the school's spokesman Ari Engelberg.

“We’ve actually had students who have been sent home and told: ‘You cannot come back because you’re exhibiting symptoms, and we need proof that you don’t have pertussis,’” Engelberg said told the Los Angeles Times.

"We have gone above and beyond," spokesman Ari Engelberg told City News Service. "We've been doing everything that we possibly can ... we're as upset and concerned about our kids getting whooping cough as anyone else would be."

The illness, also known as pertussis, gets its name from a distinctive cough that sounds like a whoop, but it may present like an ordinary respiratory infection in those who have been vaccinated. And while vaccination is the best defense, immunity wanes in five to 10 years after the last vaccine dose. The vaccination is also no guarantee that a child won't get the cough - the shot provides immunity roughly 70 percent of the time.

Public health officials have advised health care providers to consider pertussis in anyone who has a persistent cough and to report suspected cases within one day without waiting for laboratory confirmation.

Asked about vaccine policies, Engelberg said only 18 of Harvard- Westlake's roughly 1,600 students have medical exemptions allowing them to opt out of immunizations. None of those children have contracted pertussis, he said.

Personal belief and religious exemptions were eliminated under a controversial state law passed in 2015. A few upper school students are grandfathered under previous exemptions, Engelberg said.

With antibiotic treatment contagion typically ends five days after starting antibiotic treatment.

It is particularly dangerous and even deadly for infants, who end up in the hospital about 50 percent of the time after contracting the illness, according to the DPH.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.