Following the outbreak of meningitis in Kent, the UK Health Security Agency has confirmed that the strain of the disease identified is Meningitis B.
MenB is the most common cause of meningococcal meningitis in the UK, experts say.
People have started arriving for the clinic to get antibiotics at the University of Kent – even it doesn’t before its opening time. It highlights the level of concern for students, with around 1,300 doses given out yesterday. Today more clinics will be opened in Canterbury and Broadstairs. These are aimed at people who went to a club, called Club Chemistry, on 5th, 6th and 7th March.
As a precaution, the NHS is urging people who visited the nightclub that weekend to come forward for antibiotics.
The owner of nightclub Club Chemistry in Canterbury says that someone who’d been at the venue – likely between the 5 and 7 March – had a confirmed diagnosis of meningitis.
Routine vaccination against Men B for babies and young children was rolled out from 2015, so the current generation of students and others in their late teens would not have been covered. Children aged 13 or 14 are offered vaccination against other meningitis strains in a programme run through schools.
A grammar school for boys is the third Kent school to confirm a meningitis case, after a school in Ashford said that one of its Year 13 students had been admitted to hospital. According to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), 11 people are in hospital due to the Kent outbreak.
The UK Health Security Agency said “As serious and devastating as this current outbreak is, it’s very much contained in the local area in Canterbury and Kent, we’re not seeing this spread more widely. The disease doesn’t spread that easily, it really requires very close, prolonged contact or intimate contact such as kissing.”
