A 40-year-old woman who contracted streptococcus is still fighting for her life and is being treated in the ICU of the Larissa General Hospital.

Speaking to ERT, the assistant professor of hygiene and pathology, Gikas Majorkinis, emphasized that this is a rare complication in a person who does not seem to have any underlying diseases.

“She is one invasive streptococcal infection. It seems that somehow it got deep into the body and caused what we call putrefactionas a result of which she was taken to the intensive care unit and is currently fighting for her life. It’s a rare thing. It’s not an incident we’ve never seen before, it’s an incident we see every year, they’re just counted on the fingers of one, at most two hands across the country,” he said.

In response to the question of whether streptococcus is growing in our countryreplied: “My feeling is that because people have a heightened sensitivity around these issues, these incidents that were not heard of in other years have begun to be heard. They are of course very serious incidents, but they are not something that does not happen within the framework, if we can say, of normality, because these are rare complications. We all get strep and have had strep. There is no person on the planet who has not experienced such a streptococcal infection. It’s just not often that the germ gets deep into the body and causes these problems.”.

Mr. Majorkinis noted that there is an increase in cases in relation to other years and more in relation to the duration of the quarantine and social distancing measures.

“The incidence was very low of strep as well as of all infections, so we have a small increase compared to the pre-quarantine period and a large increase compared to definitely during the quarantine. It is something that we see in all European countries. England, who are monitoring this disease very closely, have given numbers and based on what we have so far, it looks like we are close to England’s numbers. So simply put, yes we have an increase but it’s not something that’s completely different to what we see in the rest of the world.”

The professor also emphasized that streptococcal infections show an increase in early spring and autumn, but are not so strongly related to the weather.

“It’s not a germ that comes and goes, like the flu. So it is throughout the year and if and as long as someone presents symptoms, i.e. sore throat, high fever, what we call purulent tonsillitis, they should take antibiotics because it is probably due to streptococcus”.