Whooping cough cases suspected at 5 schools

Highly infectious respiratory disease can cause serious illness, death in babies

Lansdowne Middle School is the latest of five schools to have a confirmed or suspected case of the highly infectious disease whooping cough this month, Greater Victoria School District superintendent Piet Langstraat said Thursday.

“It’s worrisome,” Langstraat said. “Any time there’s a publichealth concern like this and we have 20,000 students congregating in our schools every day, there’s a risk of it spreading.”

Two elementary schools, Craigflower and Cloverdale, and three middle schools, including Central and Shoreline, have had a suspected or confirmed case of pertussis, a respiratory infection commonly referred to as whooping cough, caused by bacteria in the throat. A case of pertussis was also identified at Maria Montessori Academy independent school.

The disease begins like a common cold, but over a week or two, the cough gets worse, often with a whoop-like sound sometimes followed by vomiting.

For children and adults, it’s usually an uncomfortable and prolonged illness, but for babies, it can result in pneumonia, convulsions, brain damage and, in rare cases, death.

About one infant out of every 170 who get pertussis will die from it, according to the provincial government site ImmunizeBC.ca. Most deaths — four out of five — involve babies under a year old.

The greatest concern, Langstraat said, is that elementary school students are often part of young families, “and the highest risk [of complications] is for very young children.”

Victoria pediatrician Dr. Jeff Bishop dreads hearing about new whooping cough cases in the south Island because he’s been at the bedsides of infants who have succumbed to the disease.

“I hate whooping cough with a passion,” said Bishop, a specialist in critical-care medicine, pediatric emergency and intensive-care medicine.

Bishop said he’s seen “small babies in Victoria who have been admitted to hospital for months for whooping cough, babies who required transfer to B.C. Children’s Hospital, and a couple of babies on the Island who have died from whooping cough.”

“It’s incredibly infectious,” Bishop said. “If someone in the household has exposure to it and they are not vaccinated, they are going to get whooping cough.”

Island Health is sending letters to parents with children in the affected schools, advising them to pay attention to possible signs of the disease and to go to a medical clinic or family doctor for a throat swab in suspected cases. They recommend handwashing and covering one’s mouth with an arm or sleeve when coughing to limit the spread.

Dr. Geoff McKee, resident physician with Island Health’s public health and preventive medicine, said letters have been sent to five schools in the Greater Victoria area since the beginning of the school year.

“Each of the five schools had a confirmed or suspected case of pertussis,” he said.

The south Island has already seen 83 cases of pertussis this year, McKee said, compared with 80 in 2016.

In 2015, there were an usually high 214 cases of pertussis, but in 2014, there were just 47.

There’s been no cluster of cases in any one school, he said.

Pertussis vaccinations are recommended for children at ages two months, four months, six months and 18 months, in kindergarten and then in Grade 9.

The B.C. Centre for Disease Control reported that last year, 76 per cent of two-year-olds had up-to-date immunizations in Island Health’s south Island area.

“We want to see young babies protected, as they are most at risk,” Bishop said.

Adults are advised to get a booster shot.