Expert advice from Dr Zoe Williams, our resident specialist and NHS GP.
Q) I KEEP seeing whooping cough is spreading in the UK. I have two young children, should I worry about it? Is it really that bad?
A) You are right that whooping cough is currently spreading with more cases than usual and sadly five infant deaths this year.
Pertussis – its medical name – is a bacterial infection that affects the lungs and causes a gasp of breath between coughs that makes a distinctive whooping sound.
The rise is partly because, like many infectious childhood illnesses, immunity is lower following the Covid pandemic, but vaccine rates have also dropped.
Your children should have been vaccinated as part of their routine vaccine schedule at eight, 12 and 16 weeks old.
Then children also have a four-in-one pre-school booster aged three years and four months.
It may be worth checking their red book, otherwise known as their personal child health record, if you are unsure, or ask your GP.
It is very young children and those with weakened immune systems that are most at risk, and severe complications occur mostly under the age of six months.
Pregnant women need a vaccine in pregnancy to protect their baby when it is born, before they are old enough to have their own jab.
The first symptoms tend to be mild and cold-like, developing over one to two weeks into coughing fits that can last for several weeks – hence its nickname, the “100-day cough”.
Anyone with symptoms should ask for an urgent GP appointment to get antibiotics and prevent the highly-contagious bug spreading further.