{"id":359846,"date":"2026-03-22T20:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T20:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/359846\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T20:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T20:26:08","slug":"number-of-meningitis-cases-linked-to-fatal-uk-outbreak-drops-to-20-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/359846\/","title":{"rendered":"Number of meningitis cases linked to fatal UK outbreak drops to 20 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The number of confirmed meningitis cases linked to the Kent outbreak<\/a> has fallen from 23 to 20.<\/p>\n

The UK Health Security Agency <\/a>(UKHSA) said on Sunday that three cases previously thought confirmed had been downgraded after further testing.<\/p>\n

The government body said the number of suspected cases under investigation had also fallen, from 11 to nine, putting the total number of cases at 29, down from 34 reported on Saturday.<\/p>\n

It said more cases would likely be downgraded in the coming days with the completion of further lab tests.<\/p>\n

Nineteen of the 20 confirmed cases are meningitis B, known as MenB, and all have required hospital admission.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Meningitis cases rise to 34 in UK as students queue for third day for vaccinesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

As the campaign to vaccinate thousands of young people in Kent continued into a fourth day, dozens of those eligible again queued up around the county for the vaccine or preventive antibiotics.<\/p>\n

NHS Kent and Medway said more than 8,000 MenB vaccines and 12,157 antibiotics had been handed out by 6pm on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Two students have died in the outbreak. They are 18-year-old Juliette Kenny, a sixth-former who was described by her family as \u201cfit, healthy and strong\u201d, and a University of Kent student who has not been publicly named.<\/p>\n

Dr Sherine Thomas, an infectious diseases consultant at UKHSA, said: \u201cWe continue to remain vigilant for new cases and work closely with NHS England and local authorities across the country to ensure that any new cases identified are responded to as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Risk of meningitis spreading through Europe \u2018very low\u2019 despite fatal outbreak in EnglandOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the risk to the wider population remains low, it is still really important that people know the symptoms of invasive meningococcal disease and seek immediate medical attention if they or anyone they know develops them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kent County Council\u2019s director of public health, Dr Anjan Ghosh, warned on Friday that \u201csmall household, sporadic clusters\u201d could appear in other parts of the UK as students who have travelled away from Kent \u201cincubate\u201d the illness. But he said these would be \u201ccontainable\u201d and stressed that the risk of infection between individuals remained low. \u2013 Guardian service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of confirmed meningitis cases linked to the Kent outbreak has fallen from 23 to 20. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60,303],"class_list":["post-359846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}