Please review vaccination status and offer age-appropriate vaccine to your patients, including adults. We need your help to encourage parents to keep up to date on vaccinating their children against preventable illnesses. Please talk to every patient, every visit, every time about immunizations. Help us keep one another healthy.

Testing Recommendations for Pertussis:

Using your clinical suspicion and test recommendations below, consider testing even if the individual has been vaccinated.

• A cough of any duration in a person who has been notified of a close exposure to pertussis,
• A paroxysmal cough of any duration,
• A cough with whooping, post-tussive vomiting/gagging or apnea, or
• A persistent cough of unknown etiology, lasting more than 10 days with no improvement.

Do not test if symptoms are not present.

When testing a potential new pertussis case, please collect a nasopharyngeal swab. If you don’t have a sufficient supply of swabs in your office, please direct your patients to be tested at an MHC outpatient laboratory or call the Munson Medical Center Lab at 231-935-6100.

As turnaround time for this test is 5-7 days, you may want to consider treating patients while waiting for the result based on the patient’s risk. See table below for treatment guidance.

Symptomatic, suspected cases should isolate for 5 days pending treatment completion or upon receipt of negative test results. Otherwise, isolate symptomatic patients for 21 days from symptom onset.

• Exposed, asymptomatic patients don’t need to isolate but should self-monitor for 21 days and seek testing if symptoms develop. 

All confirmed, probable, or suspected cases of pertussis should be reported to your local Health Department (see page 2). If you’re testing a patient, please notify the local Health Department!

Risk groups that should receive Post Exposure Prophylaxis:

• Household contacts of a pertussis case
• People at high risk of developing severe pertussis infection
• <12 months
• Pre-existing conditions:
  • Asthma and/or COPD
  • Obesity
  • Other Underlying Conditions—potentially immunocompromising conditions, diabetes, cardiac conditions, renal disease, a neurological condition
• Those who will have contact with people at high risk of developing severe disease
• NICU staff, childcare, maternity wards

For antibiotic treatment and prophylaxis guidance, refer to this guide.

For additional guidance, refer to the Grand Traverse Count Health Department alert that was written in partnership with Munson Healthcare Infectious Disease physicians. For further questions, please page Infection Prevention through PerfectServe Clinical Collaboration.