The alarm over meningitis is rising at the University of Kent: vaccination campaign and mass testing after two victims.

It is a race against time to stop the acute meningitis epidemic that has struck the south of England, causing two deaths and 13 hospitalizations, particularly among students in Kent county.

The British Health Minister, Wes Streeting, spoke in the House of Commons about a situation that is "unprecedented" for the spread of the disease triggered by the meningococcal bacteria B (MenB), identified in recent hours by specialists in the United Kingdom. Streeting himself stated that in recent days there was a confirmed case of contagion in France involving a person attending Kent University, which has become the symbolic location of the health emergency. He then announced the launch of a vaccination campaign aimed specifically at the students of the university located in the historic city of Canterbury. These are young people from the generation that did not receive a form of prophylaxis for meningitis, introduced in the UK for infants and young children starting from 2015.

The two victims are a student from the local university and a high school student, while there are fears of a worsening condition for some of the young people in the hospital. Research conducted by health authorities has confidently indicated the location where many of the infections occurred: the Club Chemistry nightclub in Canterbury, which was closed after the first cases. The tabloid Mirror collected the testimony of the parents of Keeleigh Goodwin, 22 years old, who contracted the disease - transmissible through close contact - simply by sharing an electronic cigarette. "She was urgently hospitalized but is out of danger," her mother recounted.

The Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and health authorities, while deploying all resources to stop the spread of cases recorded in the outbreak in the south of England, have urged the population not to be "unnecessarily worried or anxious" in light of a general risk that remains "low". However, this does not seem to have yielded significant results: not only in Kent county but throughout the country, there has been a surge in vaccine requests, particularly directed at pharmacies.

Meanwhile, the university and other schools involved have suspended a good part of their activities, and hundreds of girls and boys have continued to line up, as they did yesterday, for the precautionary distribution of antibiotics and masks. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people are being contacted throughout the county by the National Health Service (NHS) to be informed or invited to undergo preventive tests. One of the fears is that the infection may spread when out-of-town students move from Kent, as happened in the case in France, ahead of the upcoming Easter holidays. The UK Health Security Agency, the public body responsible for monitoring health security in the country, has denied any delays or underestimations, emphasizing that the first cases were recorded on Saturday and that the alert was issued on Sunday.

“We have taken the situation extremely seriously,” said a spokesperson for the agency, Gayatri Amirthalingam, to the BBC, specifying that airborne transmission requires 'very close and prolonged contact, or something intimate like a kiss'. However, this does not seem to quell the fear of many, as a certain concern reminiscent of the Covid pandemic returns, albeit on a scale that is not comparable.