LOCKDOWN LINKED TO NEW SURGE IN STREP A

As six young children die from infection in UK...

AT least six children have died from a killer winter bug after a surge in cases that could be linked to lockdowns.

Health chiefs last night warned parents and teachers to be on the alert for symptoms of a rare condition caused by the Strep A bacteria.

They said rates were up to five times higher than before the pandemic. Experts believe the alarming rise may be a result of lower childhood immunity due to repeated Covid lockdowns, allowing the infection to spread through schools.

GPs have warned of ‘unusually high’ levels of infection since children returned after summer. But the spate of six deaths in a matter

of weeks has led to fears of further severe cases to come this winter.

Strep A – or Group A Streptococcus bacteria – is often completely harmless, causing mild symptoms including a fever, muscle aches, vomiting and a sore throat.

The bacteria can also lead to more serious illnesses such as scarlet fever, which is treatable with antibiotics. But in exceptionally rare cases the bacteria – which is spread through close contact – can enter the bloodstream and cause life-threatening invasive Group A Streptococcal disease (iGAS).

Last night, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) warned parents, schools and doctors of the danger signs to watch out for.

It said rates of scarlet fever – which can lead to iGAS – were almost five times higher than normal for this time of year.

A four-year-old girl was in critical care with Strep A last night. Camila Rose Burns had been complaining about her chest hurting after a bug went round her school.

Her father Dean, from Bolton, told Sky News: ‘She’s still nowhere near out of the woods – she’s really, really poorly.’

The dramatic development comes after the death last week of seven-year-old Hanna Roap, from Penarth, near Cardiff. Parents Salah and Abul, who run a beauty salon, said they were convinced Hanna would have sur

‘Don’t just dismiss any illness as flu’

vived if a doctor had prescribed antibiotics. Mr Roap, 47, said he took his daughter to a GP after she woke up coughing at midnight last Thursday. The family say the doctor prescribed steroids and sent Hanna home, where she died less than 12 hours later.

‘She went to sleep at 4pm and never woke up,’ Mr Roap said.

It also emerged yesterday that a four-year-old boy died after an infection caused by Strep A. Muhammad Ibrahim Ali was being treated with antibiotics but collapsed and died at his home in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, on November 14, said his family.

His aunt, Azra Ali, said his sudden decline had been ‘shocking’.

‘Whatever his body was trying to fight, his heart couldn’t handle it,’ she said. Mrs Ali said Muhammad’s mother, Shabana Kousar, took him to the doctor as his condition worsened but was allegedly told to take him home and give him water and paracetamol.

However that evening he suffered breathing difficulties, went into a cardiac arrest and died.

‘The more we stress it and let people know, the more people can come forward and are aware of symptoms,’ said Mrs Ali, a teacher. The double tragedy follows the death of an unnamed six-year-old after a Strep A outbreak at a school in Surrey.

Health officials also confirmed yesterday that a youngster from St John’s School in Ealing, west London, had died from the infection. A fifth fatality was a pupil at the £15,000-a-year Colfe’s School in Lewisham, south-east London. While the cases are not thought to be directly linked, experts are urgently investigating the unusually high number of serious infections. Strep A is commonly found in the throat and on the skin, and some people have no symptoms. As well as scarlet fever, other minor illnesses it can cause include the skin infection impetigo and strep throat. Shiranee Sriskandan, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London, said scarlet fever rates ‘plummeted’ during Covid.

‘We therefore think that schoolaged children may not have built up immunity to Strep A, and so we now have a much larger cohort of non-immune children where Strep A can circulate and cause infection,’ he said. Professor Ian Jones, an infectious disease expert at Reading University, said a drop in immunity caused by a reduction in mixing during lockdowns may be partly to blame.

Dr Simon Clarke, a microbiologist at the same university, said he feared there would be further cases. ‘It strikes me that as we are seeing with flu at the moment, lack of mixing in kids may have caused a drop in population-wide immunity that could increase transmission, particularly in school-age children,’ he added.

A spokesman for Health Protection Scotland said cases of Strep A have been increasing in Scotland since October ‘as expected’ for the time of year but did not give details of the cases.

The spokesman said: ‘Bacterial infection caused by Group A Streptococcus tends to increase during the winter season.’

He added that Scottish doctors were alerted to the increase in England and early cases in Scotland on October 11.

The UKHSA said cases of iGAS were running at 2.3 per 100,000 children aged one to four – almost five times the average rate in the three pre-pandemic years.

For children aged five to nine it was 1.1 cases per 100,000, almost four times the pre-pandemic average. It said there had been five deaths within a week of an iGAS diagnosis in England so far this autumn – in addition to Hanna’s death in Wales.

The agency said there was ‘no evidence’ of a new strain.