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Less mixing between children due to the pandemic could have caused a drop in immunity to infections such as Strep A, a leading expert has suggested. Six children have died in the UK after being found to have the bacterial infection and there have been more cases than normal this year. Most Strep A cases are relatively mild and cause scarlet fever with symptoms such as a sore throat and a rash – which can be routinely treated with antibiotics. However, the bacteria can sometimes get into the bloodstream or other parts of the body and become “invasive” and life threatening – Less mixing due to COVID pandemic could be behind increased Strep A infections, says expert, after six children die (Sky News/Yahoo! News)
The father of a four-year-old girl who is in critical care with Group A Strep has said he’s “praying for a miracle” she comes home alive. Dean Burns’s daughter, Camila Rose Burns, has been fighting for her life on a ventilator at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool since Monday after she contracted the infection. He told Sky News he’s been “living in an absolute nightmare” since his daughter was taken to hospital. “She’s still nowhere near out of the woods, she’s really, really poorly,” he said – Strep A infection leaves four-year-old girl fighting for her life in Liverpool hospital (Sky News/Yahoo! News)
Text messages still play a big role in the daily lives of many, with almost one in three sending and receiving SMS messages every day – 30 years after the first text was sent – according to new figures. Despite a wide range of other communications platforms now being available, including services such as WhatsApp, instant messaging apps such as Skype, and a range of social media platforms, 20% of people still use SMS as their default messaging platform. That is according to data from communications firm Infobip, which showed that 30% of those surveyed said they sent text messages daily – with 54% saying they used SMS as a way of reaching people who were not on other messaging platforms – 30 years of the text message – Nearly one in three still send them daily (PA Media: UK News/Yahoo! News)
President Vladimir Putin could use any peace talks over Ukraine as an opportunity to rebuild Russia’s battered forces for a fresh onslaught, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has warned. Mr Cleverly said Western powers needed to be “very, very careful” if the Russian leader sought to initiate negotiations purporting to seek an end to the conflict. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said there was a risk “a ceasefire is actually just used by Putin to train up more troops and to produce more ammunition and to refit his damaged armed forces and to rearm his armed forces” – Putin may use Ukraine peace talks to rearm, warns Cleverly (PA Media: UK News/Yahoo! News)
Matt Hancock has said he was warned the Covid pandemic could kill hundreds of thousands of people in the UK two months before the Government put the country into lockdown. The former health secretary said the chief medical officer for England Professor Sir Chris Whitty had informed him in January 2020 that in a “reasonable worst case scenario” as many as 820,000 could die. However, he said that when he passed on the warning to fellow ministers at a Cabinet meeting three days later, the reaction was “shrug shrug” as they did not really believe it – Hancock says ministers were told Covid could kill 820,000 people in UK (PA Media: UK News/Yahoo! News)
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