What's driving the post-COVID-19 surge in whooping cough?

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-12-02 03:00

Australia; International; NSW

Image by Victoria from Pixabay

Whooping cough cases have spiked dramatically in Australia and globally following the COVID-19 pandemic, and Australian and international researchers say both increasing vaccination coverage and developing improved vaccines is needed to tackle the problem. In Australia, whooping cough cases hovered just over 10,000 annually in the years before COVID-19, dropped dramatically during the pandemic and then reached nearly 60,000 in 2024. In a workshop with Australian and international researchers investigating the post-COVID-19 spike in their various countries, the researchers concluded lower asymptomatic whooping cough transmission during COVID-19 among people with some immunity meant they weren't getting the immune boost they normally did over that period, and it is critical to make sure infants and pregnant women are getting vaccinated while the virus is circulating so strongly, while working to develop new vaccines that better tackle transmission as well as severe disease.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS), UK Health Security Agency

Funder: The sponsor of this work was the International Bordetella Society, and the work was led by several members of the society. No additional funding was provided to the presenters for this work.

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