Invasive Group A Streptococcus and Scarlet Fever

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for bringing this important issue before us today. To give context and answer the point, there were about 850 cases in the latest week, compared with about 186 in previous years. Generally, in peak years such as 2018, we had as many as 2,000 cases per week. We are not at those levels at the moment, but we seem to be seeing an earlier season: we normally expect levels to be higher in spring. At the same time, it is essential that we are alert. We have given instructions to doctors that they should proactively prescribe penicillin where necessary, as it is the best line of defence, and that they should be working with local health protection teams to look at whether to sometimes use antibiotics on a prophylactic basis where there is a spread in primary schools, which we know are the primary vector.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, the UK Health Security Agency is to work in collaboration with the public health agencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. What level of collaboration has taken place on issues around strep A and scarlet fever, and what have been the results and outcomes? I am aware that there have been some cases in Northern Ireland.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I know that the health agencies in each country work very closely together. I do not yet have the specific details, so I will happily follow up on this. I know that they are working very closely because it is clearly an area of concern. Right now, we have not seen any evidence of a new strain, so we think that we are looking at existing strains. We are seeing this number of cases because of a general situation where there is less immunity in the population because of the isolation related to Covid.