2 hours ago
1
PA Media
Businesses in Canterbury have told the BBC less people are around following the outbreak
A suspected case of meningitis has been linked to another educational institution in Kent amid a meningitis outbreak in the county that has left two young people dead.
The UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) has written to students at EKC Canterbury College asking them to be alert to the signs and symptoms of the disease.
Close contacts of the person affected are being offered antibiotics, it added.
The college was closed on Sunday but students "can continue to attend college as normal", said the UKHSA in the letter, seen by the BBC.
The agency said on Saturday the number of confirmed or suspected cases of meningitis in Kent had risen from 29 to 34.
Juliette Kenny, a sixth form pupil at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Faversham, was one of the two young people to die from the infection last weekend.
The second was an unnamed University of Kent student.
Other schools in the Canterbury area with confirmed or suspected cases are Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Faversham, Norton Knatchbull School in Ashford, Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury and the Canterbury Academy.
Some businesses in the city have told the BBC they have seen a decline in footfall as students "hide in their bedrooms".
The UKHSA has rolled out a targeted vaccination programme against Meningitis B (MenB), which can be life-threatening, with bacteria invading the lining of the brain and poisoning the blood.
More than 8,000 people have received jabs and some 12,150 people have also been given antibiotics, as of Saturday.
A University of Kent student, who had returned home following the outbreak, said he got up at 04:00 GMT on Friday to drive from Ipswich with his mum to get the vaccine.
Supplied
Thompson said he felt "panic" when the outbreak was first announced
Prof Shamez Ladhani, from UKHSA, previously told the BBC he was confident the outbreak was being controlled.
"We're not talking about flu or Covid, where the virus designs itself to be spread through coughing and sneezing," he said.
He added there was only a "baseline risk" to the public.
Routine vaccinations against MenB only began to be rolled out in 2015, meaning the current generation of students and others in their late teens are not protected.
Health secretary Wes Streeting said last week he would seek advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation on whether the vaccine should be made more available.
