"I thought it was from medieval times, I thought it had been eradicated." Jayne Saywell, from Portobello in Edinburgh, described her surprise earlier this week in an interview with the BBC after her 16-year-old son, Tom, was diagnosed with an infection caused by the bacteria Bordetella pertussis - better known as whooping cough. The family is not alone.
In truth, the disease has never completely vanished - although it came pretty close during the pandemic - but Scotland is currently in the grip of an outbreak that is on track to be the worst in decades. Probably the worst since a slump in vaccine uptake during the 1970s. Cases of whooping cough have surged in the first months of 2024, with the outbreak continuing to accelerate (Image: PHS) Figures published on Thursday point to a rapid acceleration in the spread of the infection in recent weeks.
According to Public Health Scotland (PHS), there were 1,084 laboratory-confirmed cases of whooping cough in Scotland between January and March. However, provisional data - which may change - previously reported that the number of confirmed cases had reached 2,232 by May 13. On Thursday, the latest weekly update from PHS put that figure at 3,237 by June 3, suggesting that more than 1000 cases had been detected in the space of just three weeks - roughly as many as were identified in the first three months of this year.
To put that into context, the most recent major outbreak of whooping cough in Scotland - between 2012 and 2013 - notche.