Group A Streptococcus

Part of 4. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:47 pm on 7 December 2022.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 3:47, 7 December 2022

I think it's important, we've obviously put a lot of additional funding into 111. Obviously, as you say, we are working very closely with UK Government to make sure we don't run out of those antibiotics. We think this has happened because perhaps of the lack of social mixing over the past couple of years. What we're seeing now is a number of cases of this common bacterial infection—let's not forget, this is quite a common infection, it's something that many people just live with—circulating at the same time as that wide range of winter respiratory infections, and we think that's what's resulted in the increase in the number of those rarer and more serious invasive strep A diseases. Thankfully, we're still at fairly low numbers, but we don't know what's coming next, so it is obviously a very concerning time for people with young children.