Guidance

Scarlet fever: managing outbreaks in schools and nurseries

Guidelines to help health protection teams control outbreaks of scarlet fever in schools, nurseries and other childcare settings.

• From: UK Health Security Agency
• Published: 16 April 2014
• Last updated: 3 April 2023 — See all updates

Documents

Guidelines for the public health management of scarlet fever outbreaks in schools, nurseries and other childcare settings

Ref: GOV-13942

PDF, 801 KB, 39 pages

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Details

These guidelines were first developed by the national incident management team (IMT) in response to the upsurge in scarlet fever in April 2014 and subsequently updated by a subgroup of the IMT in 2016 and 2017 to reflect the changing epidemiology, evidence and feedback on implementation in practice.

Further information about scarlet fever is available on GOV.UK.

Earlier versions of this guidance were published by Public Health England (PHE).

Published 16 April 2014
Last updated 3 April 2023 + show all updates

1. 3 April 2023

   Updated antibiotics table in Appendix 1.

2. 24 January 2023

   Added information on varicella vaccine PGD.

3. 24 January 2023

   Updated antibiotic prescribing table, and references to close contacts of scarlet fever with symptoms of possible GAS infection.

4. 13 October 2022

   Guidance revised to update epidemiology, research studies and provide additional template letters and checklist for HPT staff.

5. 13 February 2018

   Link to the "SF symptoms, diagnosis and treatment" document (where relevant FAQs are to be found) added to the "detail" text

6. 30 October 2017

   Guidance revised to reflect the changing epidemiology, evidence and feedback on implementation in practice.

7. 16 April 2014

   First published.