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Five babies in England have died after being diagnosed with whooping cough, health officials have said amid a rapid rise in cases.

More than 2,700 whooping cough cases have been reported across England so far in 2024 – more than three times the amount recorded in the whole of last year.

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) figures show there were 2,793 cases reported to the end of March. This is compared with the 858 cases for the whole of 2023.

The UKHSA said that between January and the end of March, there have been five infant deaths. The deaths follow warnings that cases of whooping cough could reach a 40-year high in 2024.

In March alone, some 1,319 cases were reported, according to the provisional data. The bacterial infection, also known as pertussis, affects the lungs and breathing tubes.

Whooping cough can be called the “100-day cough” because of how long it can take to recover from it, and it spreads very easily.

Dr Gayatri Amirthalingam, the UKHSA consultant epidemiologist, said: “Whooping cough can affect people of all ages but for very young babies it can be extremely serious.

“Our thoughts and condolences are with those families who have so tragically lost their baby.”

Over the last 11 years there have been 26 deaths of babies from whooping cough. The last major outbreak was in 2012 when 14 deaths were reported in one year.

Since then vaccinations have been introduced, with all the deaths since occurring in those too young to be vaccinated.

Paul Hunter, the professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia (UEA), said: “For most adults the whooping cough is not life threatening, though can be very unpleasant.

“This is a chronic repeated bout of coughing which can be so bad that people feel it a struggle to breathe in again.

“It used to be much more common in the last century up until the vaccine was introduced. However, this current year looks like we may see more cases than we have seen in any of the last 40 years.”

Prof Hunter said that a number of factors could be behind the rise in cases, including: a drop in vaccine uptake; reduced “population immunity” as a result of a fall in cases linked to social distancing measures during the pandemic; and a “scare over vaccines” in the early 2000s, which led to a group of people aged around 21 who did not complete their vaccination.

He added: “The infection can affect anyone who is not vaccinated and even some that are.

“However, the main risk of death or severe long-term complications is seen in young children, especially those under three months old.

“It is this age group that are most at risk of death and developing longer-term problems such as brain damage. The problem is that this age group is too young for the vaccine in most circumstances.

“That is why we offer vaccine to pregnant women. Not to protect them but to protect their babies during the riskiest first months of life.

“Vaccine uptake in pregnant women has been falling quite markedly in recent years.”

This is a breaking story, more to follow