Children can become unwell quite quickly, but again, parents shouldn't panic because all of the signs that would normally make a parent feel concerned about their child are the same for this. The majority of children will have a revival infection, which won't have group A strep at all or they might just have a mild infection. What we want to make sure is that we are picking up these children with more severe disease.
The UK Health Security Agency issued a rare alert on Friday, telling parents to look out for signs of strep A infection in their children. Since September, eight children in England and Wales have died after becoming unwell with Group A streptococci bacteria. Typically causing illnesses like skin infections, tonsillitis or scarlet fever, very occasionally strep A can become a life-threatening, invasive disease. But why are we seeing such a steep rise in cases in the UK this year? Madeleine Finlay speaks to Chrissie Jones, associate professor of paediatric infection at the University of Southampton, about the significance of this outbreak and the symptoms to be aware of, and asks Shiranee Sriskandan, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London, about how the bacteria can evade our immune systems and whether we may one day have a vaccine.. Help support our independent journalism at
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