Whooping cough and pneumonia cases high in NSW with children most at risk

Every season there's a new sniffle, but this year, particularly in classrooms, experts are watching closely. This winter is really challenging. NSW Health data shows that for every 100,000 people in the state, there have been 109 notifications of pertussis, otherwise known as whooping cough, so far this year. The last time the figures were this high was in 2016. Experts say whooping cough tends to surge every three to six years. But with COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing, the community effectively skipped the last spike. This year is worse and it's been forced upon us by the fact that we've lost immunity from the COVID years. Newborn babies and the elderly are most at risk for them. Infection can be fatal. A mild cold in one child can actually be a very severe disease in the other. In another child, pneumonia rates have increased dramatically, particularly in young children. This month there have been around 140 presentations to emergency departments by children with pneumonia under the age of four, compared to less than 60 at this time last year. In children aged 5 to 16, that figure was 400 at the beginning of this month, compared to less than 50 last June. The headline infections that we're seeing at the moment are vaccine preventable and there's a lot of people out there who aren't up to date and there are still several months left of cold and flu season.