Whooping cough cases are on the rise in Canada

hey folks so kids are going back to school and we're seeing a dramatic increase in cases of prusis across Canada what do you need to know so pressus is a bacterial infection it's also called whooping cough and it's sometimes called the 100 day cough the most obvious feature is the cough it starts off as a cold but as the runny nose resolves people are left with a severe cough that occurs in what are called paroxysms or attacks and you cough cough cough and you cough so much that you can barely catch your breath and in between these coughing attacks when you take that breath it sometimes sounds like a whoop and that's why it's called whooping cough uh sometimes the cough is severe enough to make people vomit particularly with kids and the cough can last a long time several months in some cases it spread very easily through the air and aerosols and it increases in the summer and particularly in the fall when kids go back to school and you get these outbreaks so in Quebec right now they have over 11 a half thousand cases this is 20 times more than the average Ontario is seeing five times more than the average uh there's an outbreak in New Brunswick this is a type of infection that does have a cyclical pattern we do see an increase every 3 to 5 years but we might also be partly seeing the effect of some missed vaccinations during the pandemic so it's easily treatable with antibiotics but if it's not treated early enough it can leave people with this chronic cough it can affect young people uh it can affect older people it's more dangerous in kids a lot of the cases we're seeing right now are in ages 10 to 14 years uh so if your child does have a severe cough see your doctor uh ask them if it could be this because we're not always thinking about this diagnosis but also really important if your child hasn't had all of their vaccines it's time to catch up and protect them from infections like whooping cough