Two people are dead and 11 are in hospital after a rare form of invasive meningitis struck a university and three schools in Britain. Health officials believe the outbreak is linked to a nightclub in Canterbury, a city just under an hour by train from London, and that it then moved through the student population.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said on the evening of March 16 that it was still investigating. It had detected 13 cases of invasive meningococcal disease, a combination of meningitis and septicaemia, between March 13 and March 15. The agency told the BBC on March 17 that the strain is Meningitis B, which experts describe as the most common cause of meningococcal meningitis in Britain.
Who died
One of the dead was a 21-year-old undergraduate at the University of Kent. The other was an 18-year-old named Juliet. Her head teacher, Amelia McIlroy, spoke to the BBC. “She was incredibly kind, thoughtful and intelligent,” McIlroy said. “She was a lovely girl, her beautiful smile, her loving nature and her sense of fun will be hugely missed. We are all devastated.”
The Guardian reported on March 16 that two other schools each had a Year 13 student infected. Pupils in that year are typically 17 to 18 years old.
Antibiotics for 30,000 people
UKHSA called the outbreak “particularly large” and “unprecedented in recent years.” It has urged more than 30,000 people to collect precautionary antibiotics from four sites across Canterbury, with priority for anyone at the Club Chemistry nightclub between March 5 and March 7.
The club’s owner, Louise Jones-Roberts, told the Press Association that more than 2,000 people would have visited the venue over those three days. British media reported that many people in face masks turned up on the morning of March 16 to get their antibiotics from health staff.
Two brothers, Matthew McDonagh, 16, and Luca, 17, had been at a party at another venue on March 14 with a person who later tested positive. They said a friend was in an induced coma. “It’s quite scary. I can’t believe it. It’s just insane,” Matthew told the Daily Mail. “I never thought this would happen again,” he added, referring to Covid-19.
Officials say it is contained
The agency said the disease can strike anyone but most often hits infants, young children, teenagers and young adults. Its deputy director, Dr Gayatri Amirthalingam, told BBC Radio 5 Live that the outbreak, “as serious and devastating as it is,” remains “very much contained in the local area in Canterbury and Kent.” She said the agency was not seeing it spread more widely.
