What on earth is going on? I have just read that a fourth child has died of what is (usually) a mild illness. What must it be like for the poor parents right now 🙁 so sad.

That’s quite a worry. If it were local to me I would question if the lack of GP appointment availability could be the reason, maybe they didn’t get seen soon enough? Seems odd if they were diagnosed in a timely manner.

But the deaths aren’t even localised (Cardiff, High Wycombe, Ealing and another location that I don’t think is mentioned in the article I read). It seems very strange.

My guess would be that its just in the news now not that the deaths are outwith the normal range

Just a guess tho

Incidence tabes are here (on the A-K tab; invasive grpA Strep – click on any wek’s cell and it’ll give you locations):

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notifiable-diseases-last-52-weeks

Deaths is clearly a different thing to incidence.  Not sure that this is avilable

edit:  iGAS is not a trivial illness – it’s very much the scary end of “strep throat etc”

Might it be due to vaccination numbers dropping due to all of the conspiracy crap that’s been going around since the MMR scares,followed by Covid?

Certainly there’s been an upswing in measles cases both here and in the United States, but I don’t know how much that has impacted StrepA/Scarlet Fever. I’ve had scarlet fever, and it was very unpleasant, I wasn’t very old, but I can still clearly remember hiding behind furniture at home to avoid any daylight, because my eyes were so sensitive to it.

For context, the article i read said there had been five or six deaths. In a normal year we would have expected four by this time. So not massively unusual. Obviously still tragic for the families involved.

Certainly there’s been an upswing in measles cases both here and in the United States, but I don’t know how much that has impacted StrepA/Scarlet Fever.

Theres no vaccine program for scarlet fever.

I think the problem will be, to an extent, parents and health professionals having their eye off the ball a little and thats maybe a reason for there being a public health message in the media.  Things like scarlet fever would be on the list of symptoms to be informed of / keep and eye out for / act quickly on as a parent of young children but there are lots of more dominant health messages eclipsing it. But the list of symptoms also sounds a lot like covid, at least in the initial stages in terms of temperatures and aches – In one circumstance  the advice is seek immediate medial help, and in the other the advice is stay home. So the worry would be theres not early enough interventions.

Less social mixing over the last couple of years and lack of immunity. There’s loads of fairly serious flu as well.

Less social mixing over the last couple of years and lack of immunity. There’s loads of fairly serious flu as well.

Or according to tbe Daily Heils front page today, it’s all lockdowns fault.

My guess would be that its just in the news now not that the deaths are outwith the normal range

I think it is more that that we wouldn’t normally expect incidence to rise sharply at this point in the year, and the warnings have gone out in case this is more than just the normal seasonal peak arriving at a different month.

I would expect an increased incidence given that there was very few reported cases during lockdown. It’s not lockdown’s fault, it’s just that these normal childhood infections have been displaced, so more are occurring this year.

Invasive strep A remains rare compared to normal common or garden strep A throat infections. Bit like sepsis is thankfully rare compared to skin infections. Loads and loads of people will have strep throat, very few will go on to develop the invasive, very dangerous version.

Seems there is a big rise in cases. Four times higher than normal.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) confirmed on Friday that invasive Strep A cases (known as iGAS) have increased this year. The rate for this year is 2.3 cases per 100,000 children aged one to four, compared with an average of 0.5 in the pre-pandemic seasons (2017 to 2019). Among five to nine-year-olds it’s 1.1 cases per 100,000 children, compared with the pre-pandemic average of 0.3.

https://news.sky.com/story/less-mixing-between-children-due-to-covid-pandemic-could-be-behind-increased-strep-a-infections-says-expert-12760714