What is whooping cough?
Caused by a bacteria called Bordetella pertussis, it infects the lining of your nose, throat and breathing tubes. It causes intense bouts of coughing and trouble breathing. Each bout may last for two or three minutes and the cough may go on for three months, which is why it’s sometimes called the hundred day cough. “Whoop” is the sound made when you breathe in deeply after coughing.
On average, each person with whooping cough passes the infection on to 12 other people.
How can you catch it?
Whooping cough is very easy to catch. It’s passed from person to person by coughing and sneezing. A person with whooping cough is likely to be infectious from the week before they start coughing to three weeks after the cough begins. Parents or older children in a family with whooping cough can easily pass it on to babies, who are too young to have fully completed their course of vaccinations.
What are the whooping cough symptoms?
Whooping cough affects you differently depending on your age.
Babies under six months
Whooping cough in young babies is unpredictable and can get worse very quickly. They may stop breathing, go blue with bad coughing bouts, get exhausted from coughing or not be able to feed because of coughing. More than half of babies under one year of age who get whooping cough need to be treated in hospital.
If your baby goes blue when coughing, stops breathing, has a seizure or is becoming very sleepy and not easy to wake up, dial 111 for urgent medical help.
Older babies and young children
The illness has three stages.
The first stage starts with a sore throat, runny nose, mild fever and sneezing – just like a cold. This lasts one or two weeks.
Then, during the second stage, there is an irritating cough. Over a week or two, the cough gets worse and comes in bouts. Children gasp for air between each bout of coughing and they get red in the face. These spells last one to three minutes and they may vomit or spit after the coughing. In between bouts, your child is likely to be well.
The third stage is the long recovery stage. The symptoms gradually get milder, but the cough continues for weeks.
Older children and adults
They have a long-lasting, irritating cough and some still get a severe illness. It can last for weeks or months. If you get a cold in the weeks after you have recovered from whooping cough, bouts of coughing can come back for a while.
What can I do?
- Vaccination is the best way to protect against whooping cough and it’s part of the NZ Immunisation Schedule. It’s a course of three injections that are given at ages six weeks, three months and five months. Two booster doses are then given at ages four and 11. These vaccinations are all free, including catch-ups for missed doses for young people up to the age of 18 years.
- Not everyone is eligible for a free vaccination. The protection you get from the vaccination reduces over time, so check with your healthcare provider if you don’t know if you might need a booster injection. If you’re pregnant, you can get a free vaccination from 16 weeks. Others in your family can get vaccinated too.
- If you think you or your child may have whooping cough, get an assessment by your healthcare provider as soon as possible. Make sure you tell the receptionist about the cough when you phone to book an appointment.
- Mild cases can be treated at home. There’s no medicine that will stop the cough once it has started and cough medicine won’t ease the coughing. However, if it’s diagnosed during the first three weeks of infection, your doctor may prescribe antibiotics, which help prevent the bacteria from spreading to other people and can reduce the amount of time you are infectious from about three weeks to two to five days. To reduce the risk of infecting others, isolate, tell your close contacts and practice good hygiene.
- Make sure you or your child gets as much rest as possible. Have small, healthy meals and plenty of fluids. If the cough is painful, you can take paracetamol. You could also sip warm drinks, use saline nose drops to help remove thick mucus and avoid coughing triggers such as cigarette smoke, perfumes or car fumes.
- If you’re very unwell, you may require hospital treatment.
Dial 111 for urgent medical help.
For more information, see Healthify He Puna Waiora.
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