Q+A | Yukon's chief medical officer on the rise in whooping cough cases

Cases of whooping cough are skyrocketing across the country and the increase has public health officials worried, including in the Yukon.

Europe and the U.S. are also seeing major spikes of the disease. Experts say it's partly because bacterial infections like whooping cough, also known as pertussis, tend to come in waves, but they say declining vaccination rates are also a factor.

Symptoms in adults are often mild, but some people can suffer pneumonia, brain damage or even broken ribs from coughing so much. Children, especially those too young to be vaccinated, are most at risk.

So far this year, the Yukon has confirmed seven cases of the disease. The territory's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Sudit Ranade, spoke Wednesday with Yukon Morning host Elyn Jones.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Remind us, what is pertussis or whooping cough?

Pertussis is the scientific name and whooping cough is the common name for this disease. And the reason is because people can cough and cough and cough and you do this really long cough and then afterwards [wheeze] to get your breath back. So hence the name whooping cough. It's a bacteria that can spread around just the normal way that respiratory viruses and bacteria spread.

We're seeing rising cases here across the country and in the Yukon. How many cases are we talking about here in the territory?

We've had seven cases, which sounds like a small number. But when you think of the population size of Yukon and the number of cases we've had in the past, this is a substantial elevation. Typically we find that people who we identify as cases have been exposed to known cases of pertussis in other places.

But when we start to find a few more cases where the person hasn't really traveled anywhere that's when we start to think there's probably a circulating pool of transmission in the community. We're certainly not at the levels of other places in the country in terms of in terms of cases, but they're rising. And I think it's important for people to remember it, to pay attention and to also seek medical attention if you have symptoms, but also keep your vaccines up to date.

How serious are the cases that we've had here?

There have been people in hospital. That's usually how they get diagnosed, just because they're symptomatic enough to need a test and care. So there have been people in the hospital, but I think that, in general, the severity has been low.

But having said that, young kids can be really, really vulnerable to pertussis, especially because their lungs and their airways are much smaller and the coughing can really upset the the rest of their ability to function.

Who else?

Young babies and newborns, pregnant women, because there's also the possibility of complications for them and potentially complications for the baby. Also anyone who is unvaccinated or people who are not able to be vaccinated. We can't vaccinate kids who are under two months and they're the most at risk. Typically the strategy is to sort of make sure there's good vaccination coverage around those newborns in the hospital.

If you do think you have pertussis, what should you do?

One of the challenges with this is that we're moving into respiratory [disease] season. There are going to be many circulating, you know, respiratory things, viruses and bacteria. If you're the parent of a really young kid, under six months, you have a low threshold for bringing them in to be seen. And this is not just because of pertussis, this is just in general because a respiratory virus can change quickly and become more severe fairly quickly.

It's really important that you let the health-care provider think about pertussis as a diagnosis, but recognize that there may be a lot of other possibilities as well. Do the normal things, stay away from other people while you're not feeling well and so forth.

You said that it can be treated with an antibiotic. Will it go away without antibiotics?

Your body does have a process of dealing with the infection and it can overcome it. It takes a long time. And during that time you're significantly infectious towards others.So the antibiotic does two things. One, it helps your body to speed up the process of recovery. The second thing it does is it really cuts down on your time frame for being infectious to other people.