Warning as cases of highly contagious '100 day' whooping cough soar

Whooping cough infections are soaring, figures have revealed, as health chiefs urged parents and pregnant women to look out for symptoms. Across England and Wales there have already been more cases of the highly contagious disease sometimes known as the '100-day cough' in the first three weeks of January than in the whole of 2022.

Health authorities have received notifications of 636 suspected cases. Over the whole of last year there were 1,728 suspected cases of Whooping Cough, triple the number in 2022 (560), and 2021 (527).

In Greater Manchester there have been 36 suspected cases, with Manchester recording the highest number of infections with seven.

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Dr Gayatri Amirthalingam, Consultant Epidemiologist at UK Health Security Agency, said: "Before the introduction of routine immunisation in the 1950s, we used to experience large epidemics of whooping cough every two to three years affecting tens of thousands of people and many deaths. Our vaccine programme has been hugely successful with a dramatic reduction in cases, but the infection hasn’t gone away completely as neither infection nor vaccination can provide life-long protection.

"Social distancing and lockdown measures imposed across the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the spread of other infections, including whooping cough. As expected, we are now seeing increased cases and given that young babies are highest risk of serious complications from whooping cough, it's vital that pregnant women get vaccinated to protect their babies from birth and that infants receive their vaccines at eight,12 and 16 weeks of age or as soon as possible after that if their vaccines are