{"id":488776,"date":"2026-03-22T05:15:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T05:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/488776\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T05:15:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T05:15:14","slug":"uk-meningitis-outbreak-cases-rise-to-34-official","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/488776\/","title":{"rendered":"UK meningitis outbreak cases rise to 34: Official"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bacterial meningitis is rarer and deadlier than the viral type.<\/p>\n<p>Babies have only been routinely vaccinated against MenB since 2015 in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>Kent council&#8217;s public health director Anjan Ghosh on Friday warned that &#8220;small household, sporadic clusters&#8221; could appear in other parts of the UK as students who have travelled home could &#8220;incubate&#8221; the bug.<\/p>\n<p>But he said these would be &#8220;containable&#8221; and stressed the risk of infection between individuals is low.<\/p>\n<p>One case linked to the outbreak has been reported in France. The French health ministry confirmed Wednesday that a person who had attended the University of Kent was hospitalised in stable condition.<\/p>\n<p>Meningitis is most common in young children, teenagers and young adults.<\/p>\n<p>Initial symptoms include headache, fever, drowsiness and a stiff neck &#8211; but those are symptoms of various illnesses and can hamper prompt diagnosis.<\/p>\n<p>Meningitis can progress rapidly, with another sign often being a rash, and is spread through prolonged close contact, including kissing or the sharing of vapes or drinks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bacterial meningitis is rarer and deadlier than the viral type. Babies have only been routinely vaccinated against MenB&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-488776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}