While the Covid-19 pandemic officially ended last year, cases of whooping cough have been spiking across Europe in recent months, US online news service Politico says, naming Croatia as the current hotspot in Europe.

In Czechia, where there are reports of whooping cough vaccine shortages, case numbers are at their highest in 60 years, Politico says, citing the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). There have also been sharp rises in Denmark, Belgium, Spain and the UK in recent months.

“Most of the rise in the past couple of years has been because of a return to pre-Covid levels,” said Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia. That’s except for this year, he said, “when infections have increased dramatically and are on track for exceeding any annual total we have seen in more than three decades.”

In 2023, a total of 853 cases were recorded in England. In February of this year alone, there were 913 cases, according to the UK Health Security Agency.

The current European hotspot is Croatia, which reported 6,261 cases in the first two and a half months of this year.

A report from the British Medical Journal says that part of the reason for the spread is a drop in vaccination rates.

Teenagers between 15 and 19 make up the majority of current cases but “virtually all deaths” in the EU and EEA this year have been in babies under three months, according to the ECDC. There have been four deaths in recent weeks in the Netherlands, more than double the usual annual rate.

Covid hangover

Europe's disease agency also suggested Covid could be to blame for the rise.

“The current increase is potentially linked to lower circulation during Covid-19 pandemic, combined with suboptimal vaccination uptake in certain groups during the Covid-19 pandemic,” it wrote in a March report.

Getting people vaccinated is key to stemming the outbreak, but that’s becoming easier said than done.

In the UK, five regional health services reported that the pandemic adversely affected vaccination rates, on top of a longer-term decline.

“We saw a lot of misinformation from the anti-vax lobby across the pandemic and I think there was quite a concern from a few of us that that misinformation would spread into hesitancy around routine immunization,” said Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton.

Head also pointed to the measles outbreak in Europe which has also been largely attributed to falling immunization levels.