Two waves of the pertussis epidemic in England in 2023 and 2024
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The resurgence of pertussis (whooping cough) becomes a serious problem in many countries including the UK. Differentiation of the accumulated monthly numbers of pertussis cases registered in England in 2023 and 2024 revealed two waves of the epidemic before and after October 2023. Identification of parameters of SIR (susceptible-infectious-removed) model allowed calculating the numbers of infectious persons and reproduction rates. The accumulated and daily numbers of cases and the duration of the first wave were predicted. If the influence of second wave will be not very significant, the new cases will stop to appear in the end of August 2025 after reaching the figure of 5.8 thousand. The maximum of average daily numbers of new cases is expected to be around 51 on 9-10 May 2024. Since the effective reproduction number is very close to its critical value 1.0, the probably of new outbreaks is very high. May be the, increase of percentage of vaccinated people could decrease this probability.
