In the last few weeks, Andalucía has registered one death and five hospitalisation of minors over Streptococcus group A.
It is a bacteria that normally multiplies in the throat and sometime on the skin of children aged between three and 15. Normally is a mild infection but with these latest cases paedriatricians are starting to wonder whether they are dealing with a more virulent strain.
During the Covid years, people were keeping their distances, wearing masks and observing hand disinfection, but this precautional behaviour has all but disappeared. The irony is that whilst families were protecting their children from Covid, they were denying them contact with the run-of-the-mill infections, leaving them without natural immunity against them.
Well, that is was doctors believe; simply those children missed the boat for herd immunisation against common bacterial infections.
This kind of bacteria doesn’t always cause problems, they simply arrive with their suitcases and make themselves at home, especially on our skin. When they do cause an infection, they are easily dealt with using penicillin or antibiotics.
The normal symptoms for this wave of infections are fever, a sore throat, tonsil infections. However, they don’t normally accompany common cold symptoms (coughs and runny nose) as these are viral reactions, not bacteria.
Nevertheless, in extreme cases they can cause toxic shock in the blood and normally results in victims ending up in the ICU.
(News: Andalucia)