Australia is in the midst of a record-breaking whooping cough epidemic, yet hospitals are not taking a simple step that could bolster defences against the potentially deadly virus.
The Immunisation Foundation of Australia is urging all hospitals to take action to follow government recommendations around vaccinations.
The IFA has said cases in Australia were at “an all-time high” with nearly 80,000 confirmed notifications in the past 24 months. Meanwhile, vaccination rates are “concerningly low”.
The Australian Immunisation Handbook recommends adults who need a tetanus-containing vaccine should receive a combined whooping cough, tetanus and diphtheria vaccine rather than just a diphtheria and tetanus vaccine.
But new analysis by the IFA revealed that many Australians admitted to hospital emergency departments with a tetanus-prone wound do not receive a combined (dTpa) vaccine.
The IFA’s analysis of 469 hospitals found that 401 continued to stock the older diphtheria and tetanus (dT) vaccine, which costs just a few dollars less per dose than a whooping cough-containing booster.
Founder Catherine Hughes, whose 32-day old son Riley died from whooping cough 10 years ago, said it was a missed opportunity to boost immunisation rates and reduce the impact of an extremely dangerous and highly infectious disease.
“It’s unacceptable that so many vaccines used for tetanus in Australian hospitals do not include added protection against whooping cough, despite established national recommendations.”
The benefits of dTpa for routine wound management in emergency departments have been quantified in the US, where a study showed that vaccination with dTpa instead of dT could prevent around 42,000 cases of whooping cough in the following three years.
In Australia, the illness was responsible for five fatalities last year, including two infants under the age of 12 months, and three adults aged over 65 years.
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The IFA analysis comes as new research published in Vaccines revealed that of 730,000 Australian adults seen by a primary care doctor, as low as 3% were up to date with whooping cough booster vaccinations.
Professor Raina MacIntyre, Head of Global Biosecurity at the Kirby Institute at University of New South Wales and senior author of the study said adults were a large component of the epidemic that has unfolded in Australia.
“Vaccination of adults is part of the solution,” she said.
“Whooping cough is deadly for infants but has also caused serious complications in adults. Our research found that Australian adults with the lowest levels of vaccination, 45-to-64-year-olds, are most likely to suffer complications associated with whooping cough, including pneumonia.
“Whooping cough risk includes soon-to-be grandparents in the context of protecting their newborn grandchild.”
While historically there had been a significant cost difference between dT and dTPa, the IFA said this gap was now far less.
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The IFA recently released its 2025 Whooping Cough Report Card, which showed 22,406 cases had been recorded in Australia up until November this year.
While that is a decrease from the 41,013 cases across the same period last year, Professor Nicholas Wood, paediatrician and vaccine expert, said Australia remained in the midst of a record-breaking whooping cough epidemic.
The report card highlighted country WA as one of the five worst performing regions for one year old pertussis vaccination coverage in the country.
WA has seen more cases of the infection this year than it did in the whole of 2024. Some 1809 have so far been recorded in the state, 500 additional cases than were recorded in the whole of last year.
WA’s Department of Health has been contacted for comment.
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