France: A stone’s throw from Tunisia: Worrying explosion of whooping cough cases

About 6,000 cases of whooping cough were registered in France, according to the Pasteur Institute on Tuesday, May 4, which alerted of a “fairly explosive rebound”.

Since the beginning of the year, whooping cough has returned to France. An epidemiologist in charge of whooping cough, at Public Health France, clarified at the end of April that whooping cough “is a cyclical disease. “Every three to five years there are peaks, which is normal.”

Nevertheless, the latest data transmitted by the Institut Pasteur show an unprecedented scale in France for at least 20 years” and “a still ascending stage of the epidemic”, according to the director of the National Reference Centers Institut Pasteur, at Press Agency.

He confirmed. “Indeed, I think we can speak regarding an explosion. We haven’t seen that in over 40 years or so.”

According to this expert, there is every reason to believe that the epidemic could continue for “a few more months, including during the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris”.

Concerning the dangerousness of the illness, expert Sylvain Brisse recalls that it is children and newborns who are most at risk. Vaccination remains the best way to protect yourself from this virus.