Whooping cough is a serious respiratory disease that is caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. Prof. Peter Šebo, who heads the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Bacterial Pathogens at the MBU, has been studying with this disease for over thirty years. A video was created at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, in which he explains why whooping cough spreads in the Czech Republic, what its consequences are, and who should get re-vaccinated.
The disease spreads for several reasons. One of them is the lower vaccination rate of the population, due to the fact people did not meet during the COVID-19 pandemic, so the disease did not spread as much. The second reason is mainly the lower effectiveness of newly developed vaccines. “The most important thing is to protect the most vulnerable, the infants. There is one key measure for this – to actively recommend pregnant women in the last trimester of pregnancy to re-vaccinate themselves against whooping cough,” recommends Peter Šebo in the video.