The surge in Strep A cases killing schoolchildren is linked to lockdown, health officials have admitted for the first time.
It comes as the tally of primary-school-aged children to die from the bacterial infection climbed to seven following the death of a child at Morelands Primary in Waterlooville, Hampshire.
Dr. Susan Hopkins
Browse the articles related to this topic below.
Join our community on Guilded.
In a bad year for flu, we can lose 20,000-25,000 people. With a largely vaccinated population, there are likely to be about 30,000 Covid-related deaths over the next 12 months, an average of about 80 deaths every day. This is about half of one per cent of the deaths we would normally expect to happen in that period.
And not all of these will be additional deaths. In many cases, Covid will just substitute for another respiratory infection.
Dr Susan Hopkins, an epidemiologist consultant in infectious diseases and microbiology from Public Health England, has pointed to the possibility we will suffer a bad flu season in 2021/22 because the level of population immunity has been pushed down by Covid restrictions in 2020/21.