The UK Is Enduring an Onslaught of Scarlet Fever. Is the US Next?

It is that backdrop of cases rising to historic heights with no clear explanation why that makes it worse. According to the World Health Organization, the health ministries of France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK have all reported increases in cases. The current cases are three times what they were at the same time last year, according to the UK Health Security Agency. British news is full of reports of huge local case counts, which is 35 times the average in Wales, with schools closing in the UK.

There is no early-warning data for a surge in the US. Invasive group A strep cases, sometimes known as iGAS, are infections that penetrate parts of the body that normally don't harborbacteria, and go on to cause potentially fatal illnesses such as toxic shock syndrome and necrotizing. The program relies on samples from hospitals. If a patient is too sick to be seen in an outpatient office, they must be admitted to the hospital.

The agency considers a subset of the US to be a representative of the whole country.

The analysis of that system is lagging behind events. The CDC is looking into a possible increase in iGAS infections among children in the United States, according to an agency spokesman.

The state of Minnesota, which is widely considered to have one of the best public health data systems, saw double the number of cases in November as it did a year earlier. NBC News reported at the end of the week that children's hospitals in Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and Washington were experiencing spikes.

There is a question for both the US and UK about why scarlet fever and other group A strep infections are hitting so hard right now. There has been no sudden change in the bacterium. If it isn't the bug that's changed, it has to be something else.

Lock Downs and a slower social mixing in the UK would have deprived children of their normal brushes with strepbacteria. Now that life has returned to normal, all those kids are being exposed at the same time, and it's possible that the same thing is happening to them. According to the CDC, the risk of iGAS can be increased by previous infections such as flu and chickenpox.