Pregnant women urged to get whooping cough vaccine

Pregnant women in the Black Country are being urged to get vaccinated against whooping cough after a rise in cases.

The bacterial infection of the lungs spreads very easily and can cause serious problems, especially in babies and young children.

The Black Country Integrated Care Board (ICB) is advising pregnant women between 16 and 32 weeks to contact their GP to get the vaccine so their baby has protection from birth.

The UK Health Security Agency warned earlier this year of a steady decline in uptake of the vaccine in pregnant women and children.

Symptoms of the infection, also known as “100-day cough”, are similar to a cold, with a runny nose and sore throat.

Sally Roberts, chief nursing officer for the ICB, which covers Wolverhampton, Dudley, Walsall and Sandwell, said anyone could catch it, but it was more serious for young children and babies.

“Getting vaccinated while you’re pregnant is highly effective in protecting your baby from developing whooping cough in the first few weeks of their life – ideally from 16 weeks up to 32 weeks of pregnancy,” she said.

“If for any reason you miss having the vaccine, you can still have it up until you go into labour.”

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The number of measles cases has stabilized, according to the Montreal Public Health.

Since March 25, there have been no contaminations reported within the community.

“Our teams have identified all contact cases of measles,” said media relations advisor Geneviève Paradis. “It’s a laborious task: each measles case produces hundreds of contacts.”

All community transmission cases since February 2024 have been caused by returning travelers who were either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.

Currently, there are 18 measles cases in Montreal – with 46 total in Quebec. This according to the April 18 figures from the provincial government.

“With the summer vacations approaching, if you’re travelling, it is essential to check if you are protected against measles,” explained Paradis.

According to Montreal Public Health, a person needs to have received two doses after the age of 12 months to be immunized against the virus.

They’ve launched a vaccination campaign throughout the region, and currently, 11,341 people have been vaccinated against measles in Montreal between March 19 and April 15.

Vaccination is also being provided in schools and at local service points.

“The vaccination operation is under the responsibility of the five CIUSSS of the territory,” concluded Paradis.

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The World Health Organization has raised concerns about the spread of H5N1 bird flu, which has an “extraordinarily high” mortality rate in humans.

An outbreak that began in 2020 has led to the deaths or killing of tens of millions of poultry. Most recently, the spread of the virus within several mammal species, including in domestic cattle in the US, has increased the risk of spillover to humans, the WHO said.

“This remains I think an enormous concern,” the UN health agency’s chief scientist, Jeremy Farrar, told reporters in Geneva.

Cows and goats joined the list of species affected last month – a surprising development for experts because they were not thought susceptible to this type of influenza. US authorities reported this month that a person in Texas was recovering from bird flu after being exposed to dairy cattle, with 16 herds across six states infected apparently after exposure to wild birds.

The A(H5N1) variant has become “a global zoonotic animal pandemic”, Farrar said.

“The great concern of course is that in … infecting ducks and chickens and then increasingly mammals, that virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans and then critically the ability to go from human to human,” he added.

So far, there is no evidence that H5N1 is spreading between humans. But in the hundreds of cases where humans have been infected through contact with animals over the past 20 years, “the mortality rate is extraordinarily high”, Farrar said, because humans have no natural immunity to the virus.

From 2003 to 2024, 889 cases and 463 deaths caused by H5N1 have been reported worldwide from 23 countries, according to the WHO, putting the case fatality rate at 52%.

The recent US case of human infection after contact with an infected mammal highlights the increased risk. When “you come into the mammalian population, then you’re getting closer to humans”, Farrar said, warning that “this virus is just looking for new, novel hosts”.

Farrar called for increased monitoring, saying it was “very important understanding how many human infections are happening … because that’s where adaptation [of the virus] will happen”.

“It’s a tragic thing to say, but if I get infected with H5N1 and I die, that’s the end of it,” he said. “If I go around the community and I spread it to somebody else then you start the cycle.”

He said efforts were under way towards the development of vaccines and therapeutics for H5N1, and stressed the need to ensure that regional and national health authorities around the world had the capacity to diagnose the virus.

This was being done so that “if H5N1 did come across to humans, with human-to-human transmission”, the world would be “in a position to immediately respond”, Farrar said, calling for equitable access to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.

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