Czech Republic struggles to contain surge of whooping cough
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Whooping cough is on the rise in the Czech Republic is no exception.
In the first week of January, say the Czech authorities, there were 28 registered cases of whooping cough.
That figure now stands at 3,084 – a number not seen since 1963.
Sufferers include the 80-year-old mayor of Prague, Bohuslav Svoboda, who is an MP as well as an eminent gynaecologist.
Coughing and spluttering his way through a parliamentary health committee meeting, a clearly irritated Dr Svoboda questioned why he had to be there in the first place.
He said he was recovering from whooping cough, but was on day six of an antibiotic course “so I’m no longer infectious… or at least that’s what they taught me at school”.
Most colleagues in the room chortled. One, however, said he could at least have worn a face mask.
For the Prague branch of the Green Party it was no laughing matter. Public health regulations dictate that those with whooping cough must stay at home until the end of their antibiotic treatment.
The party has filed criminal charges against the mayor for “spreading a contagious disease”.
As cases continued to rise, the Prague public health authority took matters into its own hands. It sent out a letter to the capital’s schools, saying in the event of a confirmed case of whooping cough in a class, any unvaccinated children must be sent home.
This was immediately shot down by the head of the national public health authority, who admonished her Prague colleagues at a press conference. Schools had no authority to send home unvaccinated children as a precaution, she said.
Instead, all cases should be judged individually, based on how long the infected child had spent in the classroom, and so on.
Epidemiologists, including one who led the government’s measures against Covid, shook their heads in disbelief. Recently amended health ministry guidelines called for exactly the approach recommended by the Prague authority, they said.
But the confusion over the official guidance obscured a curious conundrum; what unvaccinated children?
Vaccination for whooping cough, known by many in Czech as “black cough”, is mandatory in the country.
It is meant to be administered, alongside inoculation for diphtheria, tetanus, polio and others, from the very first weeks of life.
Yet according to official figures, immunisation for whooping cough is estimated at 97% of the infant population, suggesting there are thousands of unvaccinated babies in the Czech Republic.
