Government expands meningitis vaccine campaign in Kent

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Wes Streeting has broadened a meningitis B vaccination campaign to include anyone who visited the Canterbury nightclub at the centre of the outbreak in Kent. More than 1,500 people have been vaccinated so far and thousands more have received antibiotics. The number of cases linked to the outbreak has risen to 27. But many things are still unclear. While health officials are confident that the outbreak has been confined to Kent, they cannot say for certain. And even though officials have confirmed the strain of meningitis behind the cases, public health experts remain confounded by the number of people infected in a single place. It could be down to behavioural circumstances, such as sharing vapes, but this would hardly be unusual. A more worrying possibility: a mutation has made the strain more invasive.