Also Italy is on alert for the whooping cough epidemic, which has seen three deaths since the beginning of 2024 with an 800% increase in hospitalizations compared to last year. It was launched by the Italian Society of Paediatrics, after the alarm from the ECDC (European Center for Disease Prevention and Control), which highlighted almost 60 thousand cases of whooping cough throughout Europe during 2023 and up to April 2024, recording a increase of more than 10 times compared to 2022 and 2021. In Italy the majority of infections were recorded in Campania, Sicily and Lazio.
“Whooping cough is a highly contagious and dangerous disease, especially in the first months of life and in newborns who have a greater risk of complications and death. In this age group mortality is between 1 and 1.5%. We can protect this particularly vulnerable population through the immunization of mothers during the second and third trimester of pregnancy, which is highly safe and effective in protecting children who are still too young to be vaccinated – recommends the president of Sip, Annamaria Staiano – We invite pregnant women to get vaccinated against whooping cough because the lives of our little ones are at stake. It is unacceptable that in 2024 we could die from infectious diseases for which effective and safe vaccines exist.”
In Italy from January to May 2024, 110 cases of whooping cough were recorded, with over 15 hospitalizations of small infants in intensive care and three deceased newborns. The data, disclosed by Alfredo Guarino, president of the Campania section of Sip, were obtained during a Pnrr project, the Inf-Act project, which aims to develop new strategies for the early identification, prevention and treatment of infectious threats. The data were collected in 7 highly specialized centers distributed across the entire national territory.
“We have seen an increase in hospitalizations for pertussis of 800% compared to 2022 and 2023, which in most cases involved unvaccinated newborns and infants under 4 months of age. 95% of the mothers of these children did not were vaccinated and 80% had not received any information on the availability of a prenatal vaccination”, states Guarino, coordinator of the Inf-Act clinical network, specifying that “the data refer to children hospitalized in serious clinical conditions and are therefore certainly to be consider serious cases. They are, therefore, only the tip of the iceberg with respect to the circulation of whooping cough, as non-hospitalized cases are not considered”.
“The situation in Campania is particularly worrying – he underlines – where we have recorded over 30 hospitalizations of infants suffering from whooping cough in the pediatric infectious disease centers of Naples”.
AND a cry of alarm comes from Sicily. “Forty newborns and infants with whooping cough have been intercepted in the last 5 months in the emergency room of the Cristina hospital in Palermo, which is the reference point for western Sicily. Of these, 10 ended up in neonatal intensive care. In the previous season no only one case had been seen”, reports Domenico Cipolla, president of the Sicily section of the Italian Society of Paediatrics and head of the hospital’s pediatric emergency room. “Vaccination coverage in pregnant women in Sicily is extremely low”.
First peak of whooping cough in Lazio after Covid
In Lazio, 17 young patients were hospitalized for whooping cough in the first 4 months of 2024 at Umberto I in Rome, three ended up in intensive care. “In the same period last year we had recorded only one case. This is the first epidemic peak of whooping cough after Covid-19″, underlines Fabio Midulla, head of emergency pediatrics at the Capitoline hospital and full professor of pediatrics at the Sapienza University of Rome. “The reasons are not yet clear but they seem to be connected to several factors – he explains – including the limitations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic which have interrupted the spread of common respiratory pathogens, also negatively influencing vaccination coverage”.
“To effectively combat whooping cough, it is essential to maintain high vaccination coverage throughout the population. The whooping cough vaccine does not confer permanent immunity, losing effectiveness over time. For this reason, in addition to vaccinating pregnant women, it is essential – remember – do all the boosters foreseen by the vaccination calendar at every age: three doses in the first year of life with the hexavalent, a booster in the sixth year, a further booster between 12 and 18 years and then every 10 years”.
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