Low vaccination rates linked to spread of whooping cough

Enduring suspicion of vaccines is contributing to an outbreak of potentially deadly whooping cough in southern Alberta, an AHS physician said Wednesday.

A dozen linked cases of the bacterial infection, known as pertussis, have emerged in the past week alone in an area from Coaldale to Fort Macleod, said Dr. Vivien Suttorp, the AHS’s lead medical officer for the south zone.

That’s brought the number of cases in the area to 17.

She said the geography of the illnesses is consistent with a known lower vaccination rate, caused partly by an ingrained suspicion or skepticism found in some local communities.

“We have a large number of kids in these communities not protected by herd immunity because of low vaccination levels, so now we have this outbreak,” said Suttorp.

“Pertussis is almost endemic in southern Alberta.”

It’s such a concern in that part of the province that pregnant women are offered a vaccination regimen while in their third trimester, she said.

It’s a scenario that’s worsened over the past three years, with a disease that took the life of a fourmonth-old in the region in 2012, she said.

Suttorp described the psychological climate in parts of the zone as a “vaccine hesitancy perspective, a spectrum of parental and individual beliefs” driven by complacency, lack of trust and access and subject to social pressures.

“It’s a mixed bag of why people are not vaccinating,” she said, adding the result is predictable.

“In schools where immunization rates were extremely low, we saw ongoing transmissions.”

Pertussis begins with a runny nose, low-grade fever and cough, but eventually saddles the ill with a whooping-sounding cough.

Its complications can be pneumonia, convulsions, brain damage and death, says the AHS.

In areas where there’s been a heavier presence of the illness, even the vaccinated can be infected, said Suttorp.

“Where there’s a greater biomass of it, it may jump to people who are immunized,” she said. “Everybody owns this.”

She expects more cases to emerge due to a three-week incubation time and a difficulty in identifying it in its early stages.

There were 58 cases of whooping cough in the south zone last year.

Parents should ensure their children are immunized according to Alberta’s child immunization schedule, and adults should receive one dose, said Suttorp.

The consequences in failing to do so, she said, can be long lasting.

“It can sometimes take weeks, months for that recovery stage,” she said.