More babies will die from whooping cough in the UK unless vaccination rates go up to slow the spread of the infection, a leading expert has warned, citing low take-up of jabs among pregnant women as a particular concern.
Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, a consultant paediatrician and the chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the government, said under-vaccination was putting “the most vulnerable – those who are too young to have been vaccinated – at greatest risk”.
He said the only thing that could be done about rising cases was to ensure higher vaccination rates.
He added: “But very importantly, for this very vulnerable group, those who are too young to be vaccinated, is the vaccination rates in pregnant women.
“Very worryingly, those have fallen from a peak of about 75% of women being vaccinated during pregnancy to under 60% today, and that’s what puts these very young infants at particular risk.”
He said for most of the last decade there had not been many cases of whooping cough “because we’re all protected by the high vaccination rates”, but as soon as vaccination rates started to fall, “we see cases rising, the same as the situation with the measles outbreak”.
He said: “The troubling thing is that if we continue to have high rates of spread and low rates of vaccination, there will be more babies severely affected and sadly there will be more deaths.”
Figures for England show 59.3% of pregnant women between October and December 2023 were vaccinated against whooping cough, almost 16% down on the same quarter in 2016-17. London has particularly low rates, at 36.8%.
Having the vaccine in pregnancy helps bridge the immunity gap from when babies are born until they themselves can be vaccinated.
Data for 2022-23 shows 91.8% of children had had their whooping cough vaccines by their first birthday, with experts saying this figure also needs to be higher.
Figures released on Thursday showed five babies in England died between January and the end of March after being diagnosed with whooping cough.
More than 2,700 whooping cough cases have been reported across England so far in 2024, more than three times the number recorded in the whole of last year.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) figures show there were 2,793 cases reported to the end of March. That compares with 858 cases for the whole of 2023.
Dr Gayatri Amirthalingam, a consultant epidemiologist for the UKHSA, said: “Whooping cough can affect people of all ages, but for very young babies it can be extremely serious. Our thoughts and condolences are with those families who have so tragically lost their baby.”
