Whooping couch and pneumonia strikes young Aussies in NSW - as health experts issue urgent warning to parents

Wearing masks is again being encouraged to help reduce the spread of a worrying sickness spreading 'rampantly' and disproportionately affecting young people.

Whooping cough rates are at their highest in eight years in NSW, and the number of young children going to hospital with pneumonia is more than double what it was this time last year.

For every 100,000 people in NSW so far in 2024, there have been 103.1 notifications of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, the latest NSW Health respiratory surveillance report showed.

The last time the figures were higher than this was in 2016, when the rate was 139.6 per 100,000. 

'Respiratory illness right now in New South Wales is rampant,' Professor Robert Booy, an infectious diseases paediatrician at the University of Sydney, said.

He told the ABC that whooping cough and mycoplasma spreading 'actively', particularly among primary school children, is 'causing pneumonia, they're causing admissions to hospital, emergency department presentations and the need for antibiotic treatment'. 

A NSW Health report has advised people to stay home if unwell and wear a mask if they need to go out to help reduce the spread of viruses. 

The rates of pneumonia among children aged up to 16 are 'unseasonably high' and well above the levels recorded in the past five years, the report said.

In early June, almost 140 children under the age of four were taken to emergency departments with pneumonia - more than twice the 60 presentations in the same period last year.

For children aged five to 16, the figure was far worse, with 400 at the beginning of June 2024, compared with fewer than 50 at the same time in 2023.

The NSW report said the increase was probably due to a specific strain known as 'walking pneumonia', which is often caused by mycoplasma pneumoniae bacteria.

The report said this 'is a common cause of pneumonia in school-aged children and epidemics occur every three to five years'. 

The last epidemic in NSW was before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr Rebekah Hoffman, chair of the NSW and ACT branch of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, said most people who get mycoplasma pneumoniae would not feel too bad, but could have a persistent cough for weeks or even months.

'But for some kids, especially if they're immunocompromised or have other respiratory lung problems, they might get really sick and need hospitalisation,' she said.

Social distancing during the pandemic, especially in 2020 and 2021, meant children were not exposed to other illnesses such as whooping cough and pneumonia.

'So there's a whole bunch of susceptible young kids in primary school especially who are developing whooping cough and spreading it at school and other settings,' Prof Booy said.

Pre-pandemic, whooping cough tended to surge every three to six years, but Covid has seen this expand to every six to eight years.

Whooping cough can have very serious consequences for newborn babies.

'The children at most risk are the very young… they need protection from their mother being vaccinated during pregnancy, to develop antibodies which pass to the baby before it's even born,' Prof Booy said.

The NSW health department data also showed Covid remained 'high' in the state.