UK meningitis outbreak widens as antibiotics, shots advised

The UK raised the alarm over a meningitis outbreak as health authorities advised antibiotics and started a targeted vaccination program for prevention.

The country’s Health Security Agency warned of a “rapidly evolving situation” as it counted 20 likely cases, all of them in young adults. The outbreak began in the southeastern county of Kent earlier this month but a patient presented at a London hospital and there may be further contamination, the agency said Wednesday.

Doctors across the country have been advised to prescribe antibiotics to University of Kent students and anyone who visited Club Chemistry in Canterbury, a three-floor nightclub popular with the young, during three crucial days at the start of the month. The vaccination program will target as many as 5,000 local university students at first, and could be expanded, the UKHSA said.

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Meningitis is a swelling of the protective lining of the brain and spinal cord that can be deadly. The UK outbreak is caused by the meningitis B strain, which means the infection is due to a bacteria, one of the most common and potentially severe forms.

Pharmacies are running out of meningitis vaccines after a surge in demand, The Telegraph reported. Drugmakers including GSK Plc and Pfizer Inc. make meningitis B shots under the brand names Bexsero and Trumenba, respectively.

“We are ready to engage with any proposals from UK health authorities regarding the broader use of Men B vaccination to address the current outbreak in Kent,” GSK said in a statement. “The details of any such proposals are not yet established and so we cannot comment further at this stage.”

GSK’s Bexsero has been given to babies since 2015 under the UK’s National Health Service, suggesting most young adults in the country may not have received protection from the shot. Pfizer has several meningitis vaccines, although not all are available in the UK. Another vaccine from Sanofi is available on the NHS for teenagers but it only protects against four other strains of meningitis.

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“Meningitis is a serious disease as an infected person can deteriorate very quickly,” Andrew Lee, a professor of public health at the University of Sheffield, said in comments to the Science Media Center. “Thankfully, it is not easily transmissible — it is certainly not as infective as say flu or Covid-19. So you are unlikely to catch it from brief contact, such as on a bus, or brushing by someone in a corridor.”

Antibiotics don’t make people immune, but they clear the carriage of the germs at the back of the throat, so that the disease is less likely to be passed on, according to Lee. Once people are vaccinated, it takes about two weeks for immunity to develop, said Bharat Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer in public health medicine at the University of Exeter Medical School.

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