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As Oregon sweeps past the 1,100 cases mark, health officials remind everyone that vaccination against whooping cough is best way to prevent transmission PORTLAND, Ore.—Oregon swept past the 1,100 mark for the number of pertussis cases it’s seen during 2024 , beating its 2012 record of 910 cases in a single year—and making the need for people to stay up to date with their vaccinations all the more urgent. As of Monday, Dec. 30, Oregon Health Authority registered 1,105 cases of pertussis—also known as whooping cough —during 2024. There were 44 outbreaks , although the majority of cases were sporadic individual or household-related cases and not associated with outbreaks. The 2024 count represents the highest number of pertussis cases reported in Oregon in a single year since 1950 , when 1,420 cases were reported. Since 2003, eight Oregonians with pertussis have died . Five were younger than 4 months old, and there have been three deaths in adults – one in 2023 and two in 2024. While Oreg...

The Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) is alerting pet owners that samples of Northwest Naturals brand 2lb Turkey Recipe raw & frozen pet food tested positive for a H5N1 strain of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) virus .  Testing conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) and the Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (ODVL) at Oregon State University confirmed a house cat in Washington County contracted H5N1 and died after consuming the raw frozen pet food .  Tests confirmed a genetic match between the virus in the raw and frozen pet food and the infected cat. “We are confident that this cat contracted H5N1 by eating the Northwest Naturals raw and frozen pet food ,” said ODA State Veterinarian Dr. Ryan Scholz.  “This cat was strictly an indoor cat ; it was not exposed to the virus in its environment, and results from the genome sequencing confirmed that the virus recovered from the raw pe...