The number of confirmed Pertussis cases in the MethowValley has reached 12- and could likely continue to rise.
A majority of those cases are in school aged children, where about 75 % of students are immunized for the disease.
Okanogan County Health District Community Director, Lauri Jones, says that Pertussis, often called Whooping Cough, is a bacterial infection, and adds that symptoms tend to differ, depending on age.
This is not the first time the MethowValley has seen a whooping cough outbreak – last spring there were a dozen cases in the area, which was nearly all confirmed cases of pertuussis in the county for 2012.
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