Strep A infection

[Sallydimebar]

Just heard on radio how 4 children have now died of this within the month . Advise is to seek urgent medical care if worried .

How worried should we be about this infection? And am I being unreasonable in thinking it’s so hard at hospitals to seek urgent care . The poor 5 yr old who was sent away with tonsil infection as no bed was available died .

Are antibiotics working?

It's affecting all age groups, especially the over 75s

Yes I read that it was affecting over 75s too which would make sense as they are generally more susceptible to all viruses.

Not really an even spread across other age groups though. Much higher in the young and the old.

To add further context to PPs screenshot.

news.sky.com/story/grieving-mother-of-boy-who-died-with-strep-a-describes-symptoms-as-another-child-dies-with-infection-12761161

Fom Sky news
A Year 8 pupil at a school in southeast London has died after contracting Strep A - as another bereaved family revealed the symptoms their son experienced in his final days.

Colfe's School wrote to parents on Thursday to inform them a student had died after developing the infection.

Sky News understands that the pupil was in Year 8 and over the age of 10.

I don't know differently to microbiologists/immunologist but I'm not saying anything different. They are saying that if you don't get a particular virus/bacterial infection at a young age you will be more likely to that particular infection later on as you won't have antibodies to that disease. For example if you get chicken pox at age 2 you won't get it at age 4. They aren't saying that you are exposed to a virus at a young age you will be immune to other viruses or bacteria. For example, if you get chicken pox it's not going to prevent you getting bacterial infections like Strep A. In order to have some immunity to strep A you would need to catch Strep A and while you may recover and develop immunity as we have seen, not everyone does.

I wonder if that's the secondary pupil that a pp mentioned yesterday?
How many is that now? 7?

Interesting theory on what is happening

twitter.com/1goodtern/status/1598962260369559552

Oh no Ds is in year 8 and a friend of his was sent home Friday with a headache has awful cough today …heard him pop online and it was awful he just said he’s too poorly to play .

Is it just going to start spreading through the schools like covid did .

seen this as well this evening:

“Hundreds of children’s hospital beds have been closed to new patients amid a surge in winter respiratory viruses, new data shows.

An average of 133 children’s beds were closed last week due to outbreaks of respiratory viruses, which is more than five times higher than last year.”

Worth reading this tweet^
Repeat Covid is killing off the cells that kids' bodies need to fight off infection.

So they can't fight Strep A.

Now, if you're arguing that it's covid restrictions or masks making kids vulnerable to Strep A (and RSV and Flu and every other), please can you show me how restrictions or masks are killing the cells that are needed to fight infections, please?

To clear up one question - I don't have any basis for thinking that covid permanently damages your immune system. But research has proved it can damage it for eight months. What do you think it does to you if you're infected every four months, which some kids are?

paper
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1808869422001392

Thanks. This bit stood out for me "Now, if you're arguing that it's covid restrictions or masks making kids vulnerable to Strep A (and RSV and Flu and every other), please can you show me how restrictions or masks are killing the cells that are needed to fight infections, please?"

Well said booksaresaferthanpeople I agree.

I had covid for first time in March and was still recovering and developed strep A throat infection about a month after covid had 10 days of very strong antibiotics and they sorted the strep out but have been left with long covid and a heart condition from the covid infection

Thanks for the link, that’s really interesting that it mentions tonsils. Ds had covid in March 2020, and it was a pretty bad infection, including Mis-c. Since he recovered he’s had so many problems with throat pain and swollen tonsils. We’ve had hospital visits but no diagnosis (not Strep throat, not glandular fever, not an infection as unresponsive to antibiotics etc), just swollen tonsils and a painful throat since covid. It’s like the virus got “stuck” in his tonsils and flares up every time he gets run down. It’s better now than it was in 2020, but by no means gone and fixed.

(And because there are always some, no it wasn’t caused by the vaccine as the vaccines didn’t exist in 2020. It wasn’t triggered by wearing a mask, as no kids were wearing masks in 2020. He didn’t have any underlying conditions and he isn’t obese.)

What I don't get about the 'lockdown theory' is why its only started a good 18 months after schools went back.

If it was that, wouldn't it all have happened last winter?

*no kids were wearing masks in March 2020, rather. They probably were by the end of 2020 but I have pandemic memory loss so who knows!

This is why we need to be so very careful to use antibiotics responsibly. The threat of antibiotic resistance is real, and will cause countless deaths from conditions we presently treat successfully.

I am frequently shocked to hear of people not finishing prescribed courses of antibiotics, forgetting to take doses on time, or keeping prescribed courses for use in case of some subsequent infection, or attempting to bully GPs into prescribing antibiotics for what is likely to be viral infections, 'just in case'. It is so dangerous and short-sighted and puts us all in danger.

Many people seem to think antibiotic resistance is something that happens to the individual, i.e. if you take antibiotics too frequently, you build up a personal resistance to them. Thus they'll say, "I don't take them that frequently, I'll be alright." A colleague of mine says this is the reason why she doesn't ever finish a course of antibiotics, and stops them at the first sign of improvement; she believes taking as few doses as possible of a prescribed course of antibiotics will prevent her from building up a 'personal' resistance to antibiotics. She won't be persuaded otherwise. So frustrating.

Antibiotics are so precious and we must take care to preserve them for as long as we can. When they stop working, we'll be in the shit.

I had COVID in the summer, a month later I developed Strep throat having never knowingly had it before. It did feel live COVID had depleted me, and was therefore susceptible to any bug doing the rounds.

Is this only happening in the U.K. or elsewhere too? I know from friends that there has been a surge of children’s respiratory illness over North America this winter but don’t know if that has included strep

www.sciencealert.com/scientists-just-caught-bacteria-using-a-never-before-seen-trick-to-avoid-antibiotics

Interesting research on how strep a is able to evade antibiotics. Scary really.

It's happening in many places.

Germany and Switzerland have reintroduced mask mandates as they are concerned for their health system capacity.

Upturn in Sweden too (which never locked down, which further undermines the idea that this is likely to be an artefact of measures ending in March 21)

Looks like USA are struggling to source penicillin too
twitter.com/AnishaKMD/status/1598729583452475392?t=bUOZhuT9clBcJBoy2y9lyg&s=19

@RoseAndRose Thanks. Is it specifically strep or rsv? Trying to see if non UK media are reporting child mortalities like they are in U.K. and haven’t been able to find much but that might be because of language

From Martin McKee (professor of public health, BMA president) on the Daily Mail’s headline linking strep A to lockdowns:

“I try to avoid amplifying disinformation but this is dangerous nonsense that some people will believe. Shocked that some otherwise sensible scientists peddling the “immunity debt” nonsense. Someone senior at UKHSA needs to get a grip”

mobile.twitter.com/martinmckee/status/1599001607210864640

It's really worrying that lots of kids have flu and strep A now after having had multiple Covid infections. The media story is gaining pace and the tone is leaning towards 'we need to protect our kids'. Very naively, I had thought we were done with Covid 😞It's the 6th wave now apparently and children are at risk of long Covid. If SARS-CoV-2 continues to sit in or on the tonsils, what would it mean to remove tonsils? I know that's not the done thing anymore.

My son is allergic to penicillin and cannot have any of the 'mycin' antibiotics due to having an organ transplant.
What happens to him if he catches strep?? If it turns nasty will he have to do with an inferior antibiotic?