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Until now, health authorities recommended vaccinating toddlers against whooping cough and not pregnant women. The High Authority for Health is therefore reviewing its position and recommending the vaccination of pregnant women, from the second trimester.
To protect newborns from this dangerous pathology, HAS recommends that pregnant women be vaccinated against whooping cough during the second trimester of their pregnancy, between the 20and and the 36and week of amenorrhea.
What is whooping cough?
A contagious disease caused by bacteria, whooping cough affects the respiratory tract. It causes fits of coughing similar to the cry of the rooster, hence its name. Very tiring, coughing spells can also cause vomiting. Pertussis is potentially fatal in fragile people and in infants up to six months, where it kills in 90% of cases. “Between 2013 and 2021, 993 cases of whooping cough required hospitalization in children under 12 months, including 604 under 3 months” recalls the health authority.
Follow your pregnancy week by week
Strategy of “cocooning” if vaccination has not been done
This new vaccination recommendation will be incorporated into this year’s vaccination schedule. However, if the vaccination could not be carried out in the pregnant woman, the HAS insists on the protection of the child by vaccinating the family and the mother as soon as possible after birth. This is called the “cocooning” strategy. Indeed, the newborn will not be vaccinated before its two months and will be partially protected until its three months, which leaves a “window of possible contamination during the first weeks of life of the child” recalls the HAS.
Get vaccinated with every pregnancy
In its press release, the HAS adds the importance of getting vaccinated with each pregnancy. The newborn “will thus be protected thanks to the transplacental passage of the pertussis antibodies of the mother”, whereas vaccination before pregnancy will not be sufficient to protect the child.
Vaccination “effective and well tolerated”
For HAS, vaccination is the only way to protect against serious forms of the disease. She believes that pertussis vaccination is an “effective and well-tolerated vaccination”, which “decreases hospitalizations in infants under two months” and “also reduces pertussis mortality in infants under three months, without risk. increased number of adverse events in pregnant women, fetuses or newborns”.
Health professionals on the front line to vaccinate
Finally, the health authority concludes by recalling the “essential role” of health professionals who take care of pregnant women, so that they “commit fully” to the whooping cough vaccination program. Remember that the latter can be vaccinated with the non-living tetravalent vaccines currently available in France and at the same time as the vaccine against influenza or Covid-19 if they wish. For the infant, the vaccination schedule does not change, whether the mother has been vaccinated or not.