New figures link declining childhood immunisation to the highest whooping cough notifications since national monitoring began.
Pertussis rates are continuing to rise across all Australian state and territories as vaccination numbers fall to the lowest levels in 10 years, according to new data from the Productivity Commission.
The latest Report on Government Services (RoGS) shows that in 2024-25 the proportion of children fully immunised under the National Immunisation Program was among the lowest since 2015-16.
In that year, the proportion of children fully immunised was 91.6% for one-year-olds, 89.8% for two-year-olds, and 93.3% for five-year-olds, the report said.
The number of whooping cough (pertussis) notifications was 792.1 per 100,000 children in 2024-25, which is the highest since monitoring began in 1991, the report said.
“The current situation may be influenced by several factors including decreasing vaccination coverage, waning immunity, and the overall population having reduced exposure to whooping cough during the covid-19 pandemic,” the Productivity Commission said in a statement.
Among children up to 14 years, vaccination rates last year were:
- 792.1 per 100,000 children for pertussis, a significant increase since 2023-24 when the rate was 201.2 per 100,000 children.
- 0.5 per 100,000 children for measles, equivalent to the previous year and consistent with the average annual rate of notifications over the past 10 years.
- 0.1 per 100,000 children for Haemophilus influenzae type b, which has been steady since 2022-23.
Last year, 58.4% of people aged 65 years or over were vaccinated against seasonal influenza, and the figure was even lower among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at 56.6%.
Associate Professor Paul Griffin, director of Infectious Diseases at Mater Health Services in Brisbane, said the vaccination figures were “alarming and concerning”.
“While they might seem like subtle reductions over time, it amounts to a very substantial change in the immunity of the population and therefore the risks,” he told The Medical Republic.
“It’s no coincidence that we’re continuously hearing about record-breaking numbers of flu, of whooping cough, the resurgence of measles and a whole host of other vaccine-preventable diseases, when we see the figures that demonstrate that our vaccine rates have declined to these levels.
“This is very significant and should signify the need to do a lot more to try and address it.”
Professor Griffin said one argument was that better diagnostics and awareness of pertussis compared to 30 years ago has contributed to the rise in reported numbers.
“But that would not explain away the very significant numbers we’ve seen,” he said.
“Reductions in vaccination rates are definitely tied to what we’re seeing there with whooping cough.
“We know the vaccine for that works tremendously well.
“But in some people who haven’t had the opportunity to get vaccinated because they’re too young, or because their immune systems don’t respond to vaccines, the risk of them getting this very significant infection and having a poor outcome because of what we’re seeing with those numbers due to the vaccine rates should be something that everyone pays attention to.”
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Professor Griffin said last year was “a challenging year” for influenza numbers, with the emergence of the new strain Subclade K.
“Seeing vaccine rates decline for flu essentially across most age groups greatly changes the population susceptibility.
“While the flu vaccine may not necessarily prevent people getting infected, it greatly moderates the course of their illness. They’re much less likely to end up in hospital.
“So we need to think about our health system, which is fairly finite in resource and often stretched in terms of capacity.
“If we had higher flu vaccination rates and kept a proportion of those people out of hospitals and out of our GP clinics, then our health system would function better and have more capacity.
Professor Griffin said while the influenza vaccination was free for high-risk groups – and free for all in some states – that had not translated into higher levels of uptake.
“We need to understand more about what some of the barriers and challenges are and be a lot more proactive in trying to fix them, rather than just accepting that it’s harder these days to get people vaccinated.
“We need to drill down more and start trying to look at solutions to the problem as well.”
Professor Griffin said influenza was often “underestimated”, particularly since covid.
“We talked so much about how severe [covid] was and the consequences of that, and I think people have lost sight of the fact that the flu is a very significant viral infection in its own right, and we need to do more to try and address that.”
Professor Griffin said vaccination information was a “minefield”, and the rise of misinformation – including from some people in the medical field – was a huge concern.
“We do need to make sure that people are getting their information from reliable sources, particularly those on the front line of vaccination – GPs, pharmacists and nurses – so they can help them make the right decisions,” he said.
“We need to make sure we’re all on the same page to give the right information, to educate the population to try and improve uptake of all these vaccines.”
