The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) noted that in 2023, there were more than 4,600 invasive group A streptococcus samples. This is the highest number in Canada.
Group A Streptococcus is a bacteria that can cause illnesses such as strep throat, which can develop into an acute infection that can lead to pneumonia, human-eating disease, or toxic shock syndrome.
Some Canadians in Canada who contracted the virus developed infections that required hospital treatment.
CTVNews.ca asked about their experiences with strep A infections and what symptoms they experienced. Answers sent via email have not been independently verified.
“Dismemberment” and “a disease that eats people”
Lindsey Robinson has been battling a disease that eats people. or necrotizing fasciitisa bacteria that destroys skin, fat, and tissue, from April 2023.
The 37-year-old mother of two from Kingston, Ont., said her day started normally. She didn’t make her feel bad.
After completing her errands at work, she returned home feeling nauseous. At first, my temperature rose, but I didn’t have a fever yet. A few hours later, when her health started to deteriorate, she talked to her friend on her phone.
“Apparently I was talking nonsense and I passed out, so she called an ambulance,” Robinson told CTVNews.ca in an interview. “During that time, I also emailed her husband and said, ‘I think something is wrong…I need to go to the hospital.'”
Robinson begins to have doubts about her memory of events.
Later that day, medical personnel informed her that she had undergone surgery for a meat-eating disease. Her hospital staff kept her warm overnight and kept her in her ICU for five days.
When I woke up, I found a wound on the lower half of my chest.
“They have no idea why or how (it got there),” Robinson said. “People kept asking me if I was hurt, if someone had punched me in the chest.”
Robinson told doctors that she had developed a small rash in the same area a few weeks earlier, and that her entire family had been suffering from strep throat for the past month.
Robinson has been off work since April and is visited daily by a home nurse. In November, her wound tested positive for streptococcal infection, requiring new medication.
In early January, Robinson’s wound was improving, but the symptoms subsided within two days.
“The wound is back to the same size as the day they sent me home,” she said. “So it really feels like we’re back to where we started.”
Robinson is not alone in dealing with infections that cause streptococcus type A wounds.
Dan L., of Trent Hills, Ontario, nearly had his finger amputated after contracting strep A. Dunn asked CTVNews.ca to omit her last name to protect her privacy.
In September, the 62-year-old accidentally stuck a screw in the tip of his index finger while working on deck.
“By all accounts, it was a minor hole,” Dunn told CTVNews.ca in an email. “I applied pressure to stop the bleeding, washed it, applied polysporin and a small bandage, and went back to work.”
The bandage was removed two days after the incident as there were signs of healing, but by Saturday morning the wound had worsened.
“In less than 24 hours, my fingers and hands went from normal to grotesque, invasive, and painful infections,” he said. “It was just over 60 hours from the initial injury to Saturday morning.”
Dunn went to a local hospital, where he received “aggressive treatment with antibiotics” and continued to visit the ER every six hours. By Saturday night, an infection had “creeped up” in her arm, Dunn said.
“When I asked my doctor if I was going to lose my finger, he didn’t give me a positive answer, just a look of deep concern,” Dunn said. “It wasn’t until about 48 hours later that I found out I was dealing with group A strep. Words like ‘amputation’ and ‘meat-eating disease’ were thrown around.”
By Tuesday morning, Dunn was able to see another doctor, be prescribed another antibiotic, and be monitored every 24 hours for an infection. On Thursday, Dunn’s finger required surgery to “clean out” the infection.
“It’s been a very scary six days. I’m happy to say my fingers and hands are about 95 percent (usable) back,” he said. “Dr. Van Brenck saved my finger, or more, from a very scary situation and aggressive evasive streptococcal A infection.”
“It’s not just a sore throat.”
Sore throat is one of many other symptoms Canadians are reporting.
For Nicole Bishop’s son, a strep A infection caused “significant” pain in his neck.
“On Wednesday the 10th (of January), he woke me up in the middle of the night crying and saying he had pain in the back of his neck,” Bishop said in an interview with CTVNews.ca.
Her son Roman, 10, hit his head while tobogganing a few days ago. She gave him Advil, but he fell asleep sitting up because of the pain in his neck.
That day, Bishop took Roman to a primary care center where he was tested for strep throat.
“When I think of strep, I think of a sore throat, so I had no idea he had strep,” Bishop said.
Both the nurse and Bishop were surprised by the positive test results. Due to the tobogganing accident and neck pain, the primary care center sent Bishop and Roman to the hospital for a CT scan.
“We were waiting in the ER and the doctor came back and took us to a room,” Bishop said through tears. “He said, ‘The tables have turned…I’m going to be hospitalized.'”
A CT scan showed fluid from a strep throat infection between Roman’s throat and spine.
“If he hadn’t hit his head, we wouldn’t have found it,” Bishop said. “We would have just been sent home. So when we got infected, it was a complete fluke. No one was worried.”
Roman was hospitalized for five days before being discharged home, requiring medication every three hours. Bishop said she was able to return to school on Monday.
Another parent, Jessica Di Battista, told CTVNews.ca in an email that the symptoms of strep throat can be similar to other illnesses.
Her 4-year-old daughter developed a fever and difficulty walking, and ended up staying in the hospital for 16 days.
“Doctors found that her knee was severely inflamed and her hemoglobin level was very low, requiring a blood transfusion,” Di Battista said in an email.
Medical staff believed her daughter had rheumatic fever, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation website. Rheumatic fever is an inflammatory disease caused by streptococcal infection.
Her daughter needed a procedure to drain the fluid in her knee and a steroid injection into the area. For the next month, she took medication every day and also received penicillin injections.
“It’s been a very scary time and I’m worried that my daughter will get the strep throat that my 6-year-old had again,” Di Battista said. She said: “If it was really rheumatic fever that she had last year, she could get strep again and die.”
