Adults only whooping cough clinic scheduled for Friday

To combat a small outbreak of whooping cough cases in the city, the Thunder Bay District Health Unit has added an additional adult-only vaccination clinic on Friday.

A small, but steady, stream of patients took advantage of the clinic, said Diana Gowanlock, manager of infectious disease programs at the clinic.

“We were finding our regular weekly clinic was filling up, as was our appointments for younger children,” Gowanlock said.

“So we added in a clinic that was just for adults for today to try to catch them if maybe they couldn’t get into their family doctor or didn’t want to wait. Our clinic is probably booking about three weeks out now, so it’s for those who wanted to come down and ensure they had protection.”

Gowanlock said there’s been an obvious uptick in the number of whooping cough cases in the Thunder Bay area over the last few months.
“The people that are the most at risk of pertussis complications are young infants, who aren’t protected yet from any sort of vaccine series, because it’s a series that starts at two months and continues,” she said.

“So we wanted to get the message out to the public that it’s really important for adults to be immunized, especially if you’re around any young infants or pregnant women who are due to have a baby shortly.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, whooping cough is a highly contagious respiratory tract infection, symptom often marked by severe hacking cough, immediately followed by a “high-pitched intake of breath that sounds like ‘whoop.’”

The clinic runs until 3 p.m.