Japan’s whooping cough cases hit new weekly high at over 3,300
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Whooping cough, a highly contagious acute respiratory tract infection, may lead to complications like pneumonia or encephalopathy.
PHOTO: AFP
TOKYO – Whooping cough continued its surge in Japan, reaching a new weekly record of 3,353 cases, the highest since the current survey method was employed in 2018, a national health research institute said on July 8.
The highly contagious acute respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis, may lead to other complications like pneumonia or encephalopathy, which could be lethal to infants and others.
As the name suggests, people stricken with the illness get a series of hacking coughs, which often causes a high-pitched noise that sounds like a “whoop”, according to .
Preliminary data from the Japan Institute for Health Security also showed that the country logged 39,672 cases of the disease, characterised by spasmodic coughing attacks, from the start of 2025, leapfrogging the roughly 4,000 reported for all of 2024.
The latest weekly data was collected between June 23 and 29.
Since early April, the number of patients reported by hospitals and clinics across the country has been exceeding 1,000 a week, the institute said. KYODO NEWS
