A DRAMATIC spike in whooping cough cases in Australia and globally following the COVID pandemic points to a need for both increasing vaccination coverage and developing improved vaccines, according to Australian and international researchers.
As with many respiratory infections during COVID, pertussis cases declined, likely due to measures such as social distancing and mask wearing.
In Australia, cases hovered just over 10,000 annually in the years before the pandemic, dropped dramatically during the pandemic and then rocketed to nearly 60,000 in 2024.
Researchers investigating the post-COVID spike in their various countries concluded that lower asymptomatic whooping cough transmission during COVID among people with some immunity meant they were not getting the immune boost they normally did over that period.
They argued it is critical to make sure infants and pregnant women are getting vaccinated while the virus is circulating so strongly.
With a rise in antibiotic resistance also reported in some countries, the experts also stressed the need to develop new vaccines that better tackle transmission as well as severe disease.
Read the paper HERE.
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