A new threat has made its way through the California school system, and it’s not your typical influenza.

Listen to an audio story by Annenberg Radio News:

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Los Angeles County’s Director of Public Health, Jonathan Fielding, says the real scare is whooping cough or, more commonly known, pertussis.

“We’re in the middle of a very substantial pertussis epidemic,” Fielding said at a news conference regarding the new law. “We have more cases now than we have ever had since 1947.”

In 2010 alone, 8,000 cases were reported, including four deaths among infants. To thwart the outbreak once and for all, state lawmakers have passed a new law requiring all children between the 7th and 12th grades to show proof that they received their whooping cough booster shot, called Tdap, after the age of seven.

The law will go into effect July 1st.

Fielding hopes parents who usually keep their kids away from vaccinations for personal beliefs will recognize how serious whooping cough really is.

“It’s very important that everybody be immunized, and we would expect and hope that all parents will want to protect their children and protect others in their community by making sure their children are up to date with their immunizations,” Fielding said.

Rebecca Crane, a pediatrician and internal medicine specialist at Kaiser Permanente, believes vaccination and not medication is the best form of prevention against the bacterial disease.

“Even if you are diagnosed with pertussis, there’s not a medicine you can get to end your symptoms and to end your contagiousness,” Crane said.

While the new state law will require every student to have the vaccination after age seven, Crane emphasized that people should get it again after they have they have turned 18 years old. Along with pertussis, the Tdap vaccination also covers vaccinations for dptheria and tetanus.