Students in Kent are to be offered a targeted vaccination against meningitis B after two more cases in the deadly outbreak were confirmed and pharmacies ran out of vaccine doses.
Government scientists have said two people who died in the outbreak had bacterial strain B of the disease, for which most people have not been vaccinated.
The health secretary, Wes Streeting, described it as an unprecedented and rapidly developing outbreak in a Commons update.
He also confirmed that the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) had launched a small vaccination programme for students who lived at the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus halls of residence. It may be expanded amid calls for an NHS catchup vaccine programme as pharmacy stocks of the meningitis B (MenB) vaccine run out.
MenB vaccines have only been given to young children on the NHS since 2015, meaning that all those over the age of 10 are vulnerable unless they have received the jab privately.
The UKHSA said: “Given the severity of the situation, a small targeted vaccination programme will begin starting with students resident at Canterbury campus halls of residence at the University of Kent in the coming days. The vaccination programme may be expanded further as UKHSA continues to asses any ongoing risk to other populations.”
The number of confirmed cases has increased from 13 to 15. Four, including the two deaths, involved meningitis B, the UKHSA said. The remaining 11 cases are under investigation.
Streeting said French health authorities had alerted the UK to a second confirmed case in France involving a student who had attended the University of Kent.
It also emerged on Tuesday that one of the 15 people affected was a University of Kent student who travelled to London, fell ill there and sought help at a hospital in the capital on Sunday or Monday.
The seriousness of the outbreak, which experts are calling a “super-spreader” event, means the UKHSA have been treating the Kent outbreak as a national rather then local incident from when it began at the end of last week, sources said.
Pharmacies called for an NHS catchup vaccine programme to protect all those born before 2015 amid dwindling private supplies.
Dr Leyla Hannbeck, the chief executive of the Independent Pharmacies Association, said the NHS should “urgently commission pharmacies to deliver a nationwide catchup vaccination programme targeted at university students and teenagers born before 2015”.
“Pharmacies, especially in Kent, are seeing a surge in demand for private meningitis B vaccinations. But supplies are running low with some pharmacies already out of stock,” she said. “Worried families must not be left to a lottery. The NHS needs to step in and commission a national pharmacy-led catchup programme now.”
Private meningitis B vaccinations cost between £100 and £120 a dose in the UK, with a full two-dose course costing about £200 to £240. Boots offers two doses for £220.
A year 13 pupil in Faversham, named only as Juliette at the request of her parents, and an unnamed student at the University of Kent have died in the outbreak and others are being treated in hospital.
The UKHSA’s deputy director of immunisation and vaccine-preventable diseases, Gayatri Amirthalingam, urged young people in Kent to take up the offer of antibiotics.
Asked if it was safe for students to return home, she said: “If you are a university student and you’ve been offered antibiotics, or anyone else who’s been offered antibiotics, please take that immediately and it will be absolutely fine for you to return home. It’s an effective measure for protecting yourself, but also … your loved ones, your family and your friends.”
Streeting told MPs: “The onset of illness is often sudden and early diagnosis and treatment with antibiotics are vital. It doesn’t spread very easily.
“The bacteria is passed to others after a long period of close contact. For example with living with someone in shared accommodation, through prolonged kissing or sharing vapes and drinks.
“However, the symptoms are also easily mistaken for other common conditions, even for something like a hangover.”
The UKHSA is advising anyone who visited Club Chemistry in Canterbury on 5, 6 or 7 March to come forward for preventive antibiotic treatment as a “precautionary measure”.
Louise Jones-Roberts, the owner of Club Chemistry, said more than 2,000 people would have visited the venue over the three dates. The club has closed voluntarily.
The mother of one of those in hospital with the disease said she suspected her daughter caught it from a vape.
Amirthalingam said: “Meningococcal disease can be spread through a number of different routes. Vaping is just one. It is very much linked to close contact. There are plenty of other activities that can also promote the spread of this infection. Not specifically vaping.”
Eliza Gil, a clinical lecturer specialising in infectious disease at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “These students won’t have any immunity to meningitis B.”
She told 5 Live: “Currently students aren’t offered it because the risk has historically been low and also because the protection is imperfect and not very long-lived. So it was felt on balance of risk, that it wouldn’t be of benefit to students to routinely offer menB vaccination.”
The UKHSA denied there had been a delay in the response to the outbreak. Amirthalingam told Radio 4’s Today programme: “I don’t believe there’s been any delay in terms of the public health response.
“With these individuals, some of whom are extremely unwell in hospital, it can be difficult to try and ascertain detailed follow-up information, but that was done very rapidly over the weekend to be able to give that information out and identify the links within 24 hours.”
Prof Paul Hunter, an expert in infectious diseases at the University of East Anglia, said doctors could have been informed of the outbreak earlier. He said: “It’s not just about informing the public. The symptoms of the disease can be very mild. If they [doctors] know that there is a problem with meningococcal disease in the area, then they’re more likely to take those early symptoms seriously.
“The problem with meningococcal disease is that you can go from being relatively mild to on death’s door within a matter of a few hours. It is critically important that you make that information very clear, very soon.
“When I used to do this work some years back, I think we would have gone public at the point that we informed local GPs that there was such a problem, which might well have been quicker.”
Two sites in Kent have been open for the public to collect antibiotics and a further two were opened on Tuesday.
