{"id":494318,"date":"2026-03-25T10:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T10:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/494318\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T10:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T10:50:07","slug":"nhs-trust-took-two-days-to-raise-alarm-about-kent-meningitis-outbreak-says-report-meningitis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/494318\/","title":{"rendered":"NHS trust took two days to raise alarm about Kent meningitis outbreak, says report | Meningitis"},"content":{"rendered":"

East Kent hospitals NHS trust missed an earlier opportunity to alert the UK Health<\/a> Security Agency (UKHSA) over the meningitis outbreak in Kent, it has been reported.<\/p>\n

According to the BBC, the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital in Margate first reported a case to the UKHSA on the afternoon of Friday 13 March.<\/p>\n

The patient had arrived in hospital two days earlier, on Wednesday evening, but the trust waited until there was a formal diagnosis via a confirmed test before raising the alarm.<\/p>\n

Dr Des Holden, the acting chief executive of East Kent<\/a> hospitals NHS trust, told the BBC officials could have acted sooner. \u201cWe recognise there was an opportunity prior to diagnosis to notify UKHSA,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot go into the detail of individual patients\u2019 care, but the trust has been in close contact with UKHSA since Friday 13 March to discuss the management of patients presenting with suspected meningitis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UKHSA told the BBC an earlier report could have meant the agency began its investigation sooner, as well as provide antibiotics to close contacts of the patient to prevent anyone developing invasive meningitis.<\/p>\n

Two students have died in the outbreak \u2013 Juliette Kenny, 18, who was described by her family as \u201cfit, healthy and strong\u201d before her death, and a University of Kent student.<\/p>\n

According to the UKHSA, the peak of the outbreak \u2013 with the largest number of cases reported \u2013 was on 13 March.<\/p>\n

As of 12.30pm on Monday, 20 cases of meningitis had been confirmed, with a further three under investigation, bringing the total to 23. This was down from 29 on Sunday, when 20 cases were confirmed and a further nine were under investigation.<\/p>\n

Officials started vaccinating University of Kent students on Wednesday 18 March. NHS<\/a> Kent and Medway said that by 11am on 24 March, 13,386 doses of antibiotics were given out, along with 10,627 vaccines.<\/p>\n

All patients in the Kent outbreak have required hospital admission. Nine were admitted to the intensive care unit, where four remain.<\/p>\n

The UKHSA has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"East Kent hospitals NHS trust missed an earlier opportunity to alert the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-494318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494318","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=494318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}