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Speaker 1: Health authorities have declared a national hooping cough epidemic. Now,

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Speaker 1: this is a very serious or other infectious disease, and

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Speaker 1: it has actually can be particularly dangerous and serious and

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Speaker 1: even deadly for older people and newborns, especially. Doctor Nicholas

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Speaker 1: Jones is the Director of Public Health at the Ministry

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Speaker 1: of Health. Hey, Nicholas, Hi there, listen, give me some context.

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Speaker 1: How worried are you. Are we just at the start

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Speaker 1: of something, or are we full blown into a massive

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Speaker 1: problem right now?

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Speaker 2: Look, hooping cough is a serious disease, particularly as you said,

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Speaker 2: for children under twelve months, and we know that about

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Speaker 2: fifty percent of babies who catch hooping cough before that

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Speaker 2: age and are hospitalized under six months often need to

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Speaker 2: go into intensive care. So it's a serious disease. We're

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Speaker 2: at the beginning of this epidemic, and we've seen in

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Speaker 2: previous epidemics it can go on for about eighteen months.

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Speaker 2: The last time, we had about forty seven hundred cases

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Speaker 2: reported over that time period, and judging by what we're

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Speaker 2: seeing over seas, we'd be expecting higher numbers and that again,

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Speaker 2: so yes, it's a serious situation, but it's the beginning

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Speaker 2: and it's not going to it's not going to go

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Speaker 2: up overnight.

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Speaker 1: How long before we're full blown into it.

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Speaker 2: Then it's really hard to predict. But I think it's

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Speaker 2: weeks to months rather than days.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Now what are you putting this down to.

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Speaker 1: Is this kind of a lag effect from the borders

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Speaker 1: being closed and us not having much of it around,

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Speaker 1: or is it vaccine hesitancy or is it a bit

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Speaker 1: of both.

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Speaker 2: Look, it's partly to do with this disease itself. You know,

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Speaker 2: the body's own immune response. This disease doesn't produce lifetime immenity,

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Speaker 2: So whenever you're in that situation that no vaccine is

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Speaker 2: going to give you lifetime immunity either. So we're going

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Speaker 2: to be getting naturally waning immunity over time, and that

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Speaker 2: builds up in the population and we get these outbreaks.

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Speaker 2: On top of that, We've got situation where we've had

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Speaker 2: our borders closed and we've had control measures in place,

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Speaker 2: a lot of hygiene measures, et cetera with COVID, and

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Speaker 2: we think that it probably means has been less infection

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Speaker 2: in the community generally, lease opportunities for older children and

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Speaker 2: adults to kind of be boosted naturally, and we've seen

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Speaker 2: this in other countries that the levels are when it's

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Speaker 2: come around again seemed to be much higher. Whether I

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Speaker 2: don't know how much vaccine hesidency is contributing to this.

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Speaker 2: I suspect not as much as we might think. Look

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Speaker 2: at an issue and obviously get in your vaccines on

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Speaker 2: time as one of our key messages, but I think

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Speaker 2: there's other factors at play.

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Speaker 1: Nicholas, he thanks very much ruining us, Sir At Nicholas Jones,

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Speaker 1: Director of Public Health at the Ministry of Health. For

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