Thirty students at the private Harvard-Westlake School have recently fallen ill with whooping cough, part of a larger outbreak across Los Angeles County that officials are struggling to contain.
The surge of cases at Harvard-Westlake spans the Studio City and Beverly Crest campuses of the school, where 1,600 students are enrolled.
Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is highly contagious and spread by coughing, sneezing or simply breathing air around an infected person. Young children are vaccinated against pertussis and then given a booster dose around age 11 or 12.
L.A. County health officials sent an email to doctors last week warning of three clusters of pertussis in different parts of the county. The advisory stated that 50 people had been sickened in the recent wave.
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