The thousands of people who crowded into Club Chemistry in Canterbury on the nights of 5, 6 and 7 March had no idea they were attending meningitis super-spreader events, said Lara Wildenberg in The Times. But it is now clear that as these youngsters shared drinks and vapes, kissed and danced, MenB was passing between them.
Cautiously optimistic
On 13 March, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) was notified by a hospital in Kent of a confirmed case of meningitis in a patient who had been admitted two days earlier. It started contact tracing, but local students were told nothing and so continued to mix.
On 14 March, hospitals reported a surge in admissions of young people with symptoms of meningitis, and on the campus of the University of Kent the mood shifted, as a video clip of a student being wheeled away by paramedics circulated on WhatsApp. Finally, on Sunday 15 March, the UKHSA issued a public alert and launched a “full-scale response”. Over the next few days, thousands of people were given preventative antibiotics and MenB vaccines.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Latest Videos From
By the end of last week, there had been 20 confirmed cases of MenB, said The Guardian. All the patients had been hospitalised, and two had died: an unnamed student aged 21, and Juliette Kenny, 18, a local sixth-former. But with no cases reported since, health authorities are cautiously optimistic that the outbreak – the worst in the UK in a generation – has peaked.
Few youngsters are vaccinated
MenB can kill within hours of symptoms becoming apparent, said Laura Donnelly in The Telegraph, but these symptoms are easily mistaken for those of flu – or even a bad hangover. So why were students not alerted earlier?
What troubles me is that so few youngsters are vaccinated for this terrifying disease, said Camilla Tominey in the same paper. Aged 13 or 14, children are jabbed for other forms of meningitis, and since 2015, babies have been given MenB jabs. For everyone else, the only option is to get the jab privately (if they can – stocks are very low). There are reasons for this, said BBC News. Although a quarter of adolescents carry the meningococcal B bacteria, it is very rare that it causes disease.
The vaccine does not offer long-term protection: babies have it to protect them during infancy, when they are most vulnerable. And it doesn’t stop transmission, or work on all forms of MenB. Even so, there have long been calls for teenagers to be offered MenB jabs, and ministers have promised to review the policy. But even if teenagers are vaccinated, they won’t be totally safe, or safe for ever – so being alert to the symptoms of meningitis will remain vital.
