Strep nightmare in Britain, where nine children died after contracting the infection in a particularly aggressive form. The latest victim is a pupil at Black Mountain Primary School in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The spread of the bacterium led Education Minister Nick Gibb to tell Sky News today that antibiotics could be given to children with strep A to stop the infection.
Colin Brown, deputy director of the UK’s Health and Safety Agency (Ukhsa), told Sky News there were “longstanding guidelines” that allow health protection teams to assess the situation in schools and kindergartens to consider antibiotic prophylaxis for “a group of children in certain classes or in the whole complex”.