Meningitis outbreak: ‘We’re not out of the woods yet,’ says Streeting

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said “we’re not out of the woods yet” after the deadly outbreak of meningitis in Kent.

He said that cases are expected to emerge in other parts of the country, as they would in a normal year, but lab testing will take place in every case to assess whether it is linked to the Canterbury outbreak.

It comes as a hospital trust has been accused of missing an earlier opportunity to alert health officials about a case of meningitis in Kent.

A patient first presented to The Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate on the evening of Wednesday March 11, the BBC reported.

But the hospital did not report the case to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) until Friday March 13 once a diagnosis had been confirmed.

By law, all suspected cases of meningitis are supposed to be reported to the UKHSA without waiting for laboratory confirmation.

Mr Streeting said that the hospital notified the UKHSA within 26 hours, when they were supposed to do so within 24 hours.

“That is not acceptable, and it is not good enough,” he said. “Reassurance I can offer is that it doesn’t appear to have a material impact on the steps we took to contain the outbreak.

“We will obviously look more into what went wrong, why and I’m expecting an account of that failure, not just to the UK Health Security Agency, but to me as the Health and Social Care Secretary.”

He said there has been a “remarkable response” from health and education staff, adding: “So far, the results are encouraging, we’re beginning to see the numbers of known, confirmed, suspected cases fall day-by-day.

“We’re not out of the woods yet.

“We would expect to see, over the coming weeks, cases emerge in other parts of the country – we would expect to see that in a normal year. In every case, we do lab testing to see if it’s linked back to the Canterbury outbreak.

“We want to be sure, to assure ourselves and to assure the public that we’ve contained this.”

He added: “For all of the treatment we have available and the vaccination this is a high risk and deadly disease.

“Throughout the last week I have had at the forefront of my mind the two young people, and their grieving families and friends, who have been lost as a result of this meningitis outbreak. That is why we are taking it so seriously.”

East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust, which runs the Margate hospital, admitted there was “an opportunity prior to diagnosis being confirmed” to notify UKHSA.

Dr Des Holden, acting chief executive at the trust, said: “Our first patient presented on the evening of Wednesday March 11.

“We recognise there was an opportunity prior to diagnosis being confirmed on Friday March 13 to notify UKHSA.

“We cannot go into the detail of individual patients’ care but the trust has been in close contact with UKHSA since Friday March 13 to discuss the management of patients presenting with suspected meningitis.”

Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said: “The need to inform UKHSA urgently is for two reasons: (Firstly), so antibiotic prophylaxis can be given urgently to contacts to reduce the risk that they develop disease.

“But the dates of onset of the known cases suggest that so far most/all known cases acquired their infection earlier than could have been prevented.

“(Secondly, to encourage) people to seek care sooner rather than later.

“If you develop the disease, your chance of survival and survival healthy depends in part on how quickly you start antibiotics.

“So this delay could have meant people delayed seeking health care and so became more unwell, were more likely to be admitted to ITU, and are more likely to have residual disability.”

It comes as East Kent was named as one of the first hospital trusts to be placed under the NHS Intensive Recovery programme.

The Department of Health and Social Care said the programme had identified trusts at the bottom of the NHS league tables where patients faced the longest waits for care, there were persistent financial problems and high leadership “churn”.

Two students have died in the meningitis outbreak – 18-year-old Juliette Kenny, who was described by her family as “fit, healthy and strong” before her death, and a University of Kent student.

As of 12.30pm on Tuesday, 20 laboratory cases had been confirmed, with a further two under investigation, bringing the total to 22, according to the UKHSA.

This was down from Monday when 20 cases were confirmed and three were under investigation.

Officials started vaccinating University of Kent students on Wednesday March 18.

NHS Kent and Medway said that by 11am on March 24, 13,386 doses of antibiotics had been given out – along with 10,627 vaccines.

All patients in the Kent outbreak have required hospital admission.

Nine were admitted to the intensive care unit, where four remain.

A UKHSA spokesperson said: “UKHSA has well-established processes for dealing with single cases or cases where there are small numbers of people affected including offering antibiotic prophylactics to household or family members or people that have had an overnight stay during the incubation period.

“The events of Saturday night with acutely unwell individuals triggered a large-scale public health response on Sunday as the information emerged.”