Six children under the age of 10 have died in recent days in the UK from a group A streptococcus infection, British health authorities have announced.
According to Sky News, five children died in England and one died in Wales.
As explained by that British television channel, it is an invasive infection caused by group A streptococcus, a very common bacterium that is present in many people and that usually causes sore throats or minor minor infections. It is, for example, the bacterium responsible for scarlet fever.
However, in some very rare situations, the bacteria can enter the bloodstream and spread rapidly, leading to an invasive infection that can be fatal.
This type of invasive infection, although rare, is becoming more frequent in the United Kingdom, according to data from the British health authorities. This year, for children ages one to four, there were 2.3 cases of invasive infection per 100,000 children, more than four times the pre-pandemic rate of 0.5 cases for every 100,000 children.
In the case of older children, between five and nine years old, this year there were 1.1 cases per 100,000 children, a value also much higher than the 0.3 registered between 2017 and 2019.
The British health authorities are investigating this sharp increase in the number of serious infections in children. One of the main hypotheses under study is the possibility that the confinements caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have reduced immunity to different types of bacteria among children, which allowed the serious infection to develop more easily.
Based on the information available to date, it does not appear to be a single chain of transmission, since the six deceased children lived in geographically dispersed places and had no contact with each other.
The increased number of deaths from severe group A streptococcal infection has been associated with increased circulation of the bacterium in general. Still according to the British health authorities, the number of cases of scarlet fever registered in the country has been, at this time, much higher than that registered at the same time of the year in previous years: 851 in the last week, compared to an average of 186 cases per week in previous years.
Infection with this bacterium, even the most serious, can be cured with antibiotics, as long as it is detected at an early stage.
Source: Observadora
