Meningitis B vaccine should be given to all teenagers, infectious diseases expert claims

An infectious diseases expert tonight called on public health officials to re-evaluate a meningitis B vaccine trial for adolescents.

Professor Paul Hunter, a member of the Emergency Preparedness and Response unit at the National Institute for Health Research, says the Canterbury outbreak should prompt an urgent review.

He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘This will be determined by whether this outbreak is a one-off or an indicator of events to come.’

It comes as the number of confirmed and suspected cases linked to the Kent outbreak rose to 34 after a further five cases were detected.

Two teenagers died and it was feared that students returning home for the Easter holidays could spread the disease, with occasional household cases outside the epicentre.

Secondary cases may include people at Club Chemistry in Canterbury who were not infected, thought to be the source of the outbreak, but caught it from someone who was there, officials said.

Health chiefs said they should be easy to control and believed the epidemic had reached its peak.

Hundreds of students at the University of Kent queued again today to be vaccinated.

People, mostly students, lined up to receive the meningitis B vaccine at a sports center on the University of Kent campus this weekend

Antibiotics offer quicker protection against the outbreak and health chiefs say the rollout is going well, with more than 12,000 doses delivered by this morning.

Professor Hunter, from Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, said: ‘Once an outbreak is suspected, what is critically important is to start identifying contacts, offering them antibiotics and giving them advice on what to do if they become ill.’

Juliette Kenny, an 18-year-old sixth form student at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Faversham, and an unnamed 21-year-old student from the University of Kent have died since the outbreak.

Juliette’s father, Michael, said ‘no family should have to experience this pain and tragedy’ and called for young people to be better protected against meningitis B.

This included calling on the Government to improve young people’s access to the MenB vaccine.

The vaccine began being administered to babies on the NHS in 2015; This means that most young people born before this date are not protected unless they have it done specifically.

Among the queues today were students who left the city to go home for the Easter holidays but returned to collect their medicines.

A spokesman for the UK Health Security Agency said last night there were ‘no supply issues’ with vaccines or antibiotics.

He added: ‘There are adequate stocks of antibiotics at the university, local hospitals and the ambulance service.’