Whooping cough cases increased by more than 1,200% in Brazil in 2024

The data collected by researchers from Fiocruz and the Faculty of Medicine of Petrópolis at Centro Universitário Arthur de Sá Earp Neto (Unifase) also show that more than half of last year’s cases were registered in children under 1 year of age, who also account for more than 80% of hospitalizations.

Patricia Boccolini believes that several factors may be contributing to the increase in cases, such as the resumption of natural cycles of the disease post-pandemic, the disorganization of local health services and the increase in testing, but one of the main vulnerabilities is the inequality of vaccination coverage across the country.

“Although we are not managing to reach the targets, vaccination coverage is not that low, when we look at national and regional numbers. The big problem is when we start to look at the micro, the municipal data show a lot of heterogeneity, some centers with high coverage and others not”, he explains.

According to the Ministry of Health, more than 90% of babies and 86% of pregnant women received immunizations that protect against whooping cough last year, surpassing the numbers from 2013. But the Observatory coordinator remembers that the 95% coverage target has not yet been reached, and older children and unvaccinated adults can also contract and transmit the disease, despite it affecting children more seriously.

The number of cases in 2024 is close to that of 2015, when more than 2,300 cases were registered among children under five years of age. From 2016 onwards, cases began to fall and the last year with more than a thousand records was in 2019.

But it is not just Brazil that is facing an increase in cases. The entire region of the Americas is on alert for the disease. According to PAHO, in the first seven months of 2025, nine countries in the region reported more than 18 thousand cases and 128 deaths across all ages.