At least two students in the U.K. have died in an outbreak of a dangerous bacterial infection that is alarming public health officials there.
Meningococcal meningitis is a contagious illness caused by the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis and spread in respiratory droplets. (Meningitis can also be caused by other bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi and can occur as a complication of other diseases, such as measles.) The core symptoms can include a fever, vomiting, confusion, muscle and joint pain and stiffness, pale or blotchy skin and a rash that doesn’t disappear when pressed. Bacterial meningitis such as meningococcal meningitis requires immediate treatment with antibiotics, but it is also largely preventable with vaccines—yet protection wanes over time, and in the U.K., a key vaccine for meningitis is only routinely administered to babies.
Meningococcal meningitis spreads most easily in places where people who aren’t vaccinated against the disease gather in close contact, such as in schools or student housing. More than 30,000 people in the region around the University of Kent in England, where a student died of the infection, have been contacted about the outbreak, according to the U.K. Health Security Agency. At least 11 people are seriously ill and hospitalized with the infection.
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Young people in the U.K. are routinely vaccinated against the disease. Health officials there recommend giving the vaccine Bexsero, which protects against meningococcal group B bacteria, to babies aged eight weeks, followed by a second dose at 12 weeks of age and a booster at one year old. Another vaccine, the MenACWY shot, offers further protection against four bacterial species that can cause the disease; it is offered to 14-year-olds and people up to the age of 25 who have never had a Hib/MenC vaccine, which protects against Haemophilus influenzae type b and meningococcal group C bacteria. (Previously babies in the U.K. were administered a combined vaccine that included MenC, although the country recently changed its guidance to instead offer the MenACWY shot at 18 months.) It’s unclear which strain of meningitis is behind the current outbreak.
Meanwhile in the U.S., under the leadership of U.S. secretary of health and human services and longtime vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped recommending a routine meningococcal vaccine for babies last December—a decision that was decried by public health experts as risking children’s lives. The agency still recommends that all children should receive the MenACWY vaccine when they are between 11 and 12 years old and a booster at age 16.
