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Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, head of the UK's vaccine committee, said the youngest were at greatest risk and more pregnant women should be vaccinated. If the disease continues to spread, more babies will die, he warned. The whooping cough vaccine is offered to babies and pre-school children.
The "only thing we can actually do" about rising cases of whooping cough is to ensure higher vaccination rates, Prof Pollard told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "Very important - for this very vulnerable group, those who are too young to be vaccinated - is the vaccination rate in pregnant women," he added. "Worryingly, those have fallen from a peak of about 75% of women being vaccinated during pregnancy to under 60% today, and that's what puts these very young infants at particular risk.
" London has particularly low vaccination rates of 36.8%. UK health officials say there have been 1,319 cases of whooping cough in England in March, up from 900 in February, giving a total of nearly 2,800 so far this year.
The bacterial infection, which can develop into prolonged bouts of coughing, is a cyclical disease, with peaks seen every three to five years. The last peak year came in 2016, when there were nearly 6,000 cases in England. Half of cases seen so far this year have been in the under-15s, with the highest rates in babies under three months, who are most at risk.
The five babies who died this year - the first deaths since 2019 - were all under three months old. "The troubling thing is that .
