Dr. Marla Shapiro on what you need to know as whooping cough case numbers rise

Published: Aug 29, 2024 Duration: 00:04:20 Category: News & Politics

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the number of whooping cough cases in several provinces continues to rise and that is prompting warnings from Doctors ctv's medical expert Dr Marlo Shapiro is here with me now to talk more about it Dr Shapiro thank you as always for joining us what is the sit situation like how bad is it it's really quite you know you take a look at the numbers and you really take a step back there's a normal cyclicity to whooping cough bellasis which is what we call it usually about 2 to 5 years 2019 we saw a peak 5 years later we're seeing a peak but it's probably being fueled not only by the normal cyclicity that we see of it but the fact that so many kids fell off their vaccines so we look at the numbers look at Quebec 11,600 compared to just you know normally an annual basis is 5 to 600 you look at Ontario 470 normally our cases are in the double digits New Brunswick as well 141 cases so if you look at what the Baseline has been for the past several years and where we are now those numbers are really up not only in Canada we're seeing them in North America the United States as well so we're really concerned we're on the moment of kids going back to school and it's transmitted Airborne so it's really concerning about these rise and these numbers and it and it's easy easily transmittable it's also easily taken care of too vaccination you know when you when you look at sort of who's at risk anybody who's very young or has any type of autoimmune condition asthma that type of thing we typically see in 10 to 14 year olds there's a number of cases cases but we're really worried about the kids under age 1 and our vaccine schedule is really quite clear we start immunizing at two months four months 6 months when a child is 18 months of age again at age four to six again at age 15 so there's big that big gap between four and then 15 which is why you see a lot of kids between 10 to 14 running out of that immunity and then once as an adult and for pregnant moms we vaccinate them in their last trimester so that they'll develop antibod and pass it on to the baby so they're protected before they have their first series which doesn't start until 2 months so you can see that if you know we lose the vaccines and we lose the her immunity we get that increase in transmission and it really is a worrisome disease what's what's the concern with it what makes it so dangerous well first of all the symptoms are really no fun lots of coughing runny nose the cough can last up to a 100 days it's got that classic sort of whoop noise that comes after the coughing and you know you really can be quite ill and we even see mortality with this particularly in the very young so that's the concern that we have with this if we don't diagnose you and treat you with an antibiotic within the first few weeks antibiotics probably won't help and then it's a question of running the course if you know that you've been exposed to a case we can give you postexposure antibiotics but really the number one is vaccination vaccination this is a vaccine preventable disease you know good hygiene is important but this this is Airborne and you really want to diagnose early treat early but really this is about prevention so look at the age of your children did they you know run out of their vaccines during covid and are they not up to dat as you and as an adult have you had your protestas vaccine and as a pregnant mom remember you must be vaccinated in that last trimester and it makes me want to check on it because I know my son he's got all his vaccines but because he was 15 through the end of the tail end of the pandemic so I'm not sure if he got that one and this is a vaccine that you get at school this is a vaccine that you get in your primary care provider so typically kids get it between Age 4 to six before they enter the primary years of school they get a 10year booster at age 15 but a lot of our kids did not get that booster or didn't get the primary completion series because of the interruption of covid so call your doc your primary care provider your nurse practitioner whoever you see and make sure that your protestas vaccines are up to date and what about adults when should they think when should they have gotten in every pregnancy in the last semer for women and once as an adult so typically if you're age 15 and then you're age 25 we'd give it to you again as once in an adult series we really want to keep that herd immunity up we really want to protect our most vulnerable kids under the age of one okay absolutely always appreciate you joining us thank you very much Dr Mara Shapiro is our CTV medical expert

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