{"id":11656,"date":"2026-03-18T15:16:44","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T20:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11656"},"modified":"2026-03-18T15:16:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T20:16:46","slug":"what-is-behind-the-uks-meningitis-outbreak-and-how-serious-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/03\/18\/what-is-behind-the-uks-meningitis-outbreak-and-how-serious-is-it\/","title":{"rendered":"What is behind the UK\u2019s meningitis outbreak and how serious is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2026\/mar\/18\/what-caused-uk-meningitis-outbreak-how-serious-is-it\">The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cases of MenB linked to Canterbury nightclub have risen to 20, with two deaths, as experts warn of \u2018explosive\u2019 outbreak. Meningitis infections in a county in the south-east of England continue to increase, with five new cases confirmed on Wednesday in what experts have said is one of the fastest-growing outbreaks of the disease they have seen in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"what-happened-and-where\">What happened and where?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>On 15 March, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), a public health body, issued a public health alert confirming two people had died during an outbreak of meningitis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It had occurred in and around Canterbury, a city of about 60,000 people in the county of Kent, near London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Health officials later confirmed the strain involved was meningitis B (MenB).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2026\/mar\/18\/what-caused-uk-meningitis-outbreak-how-serious-is-it\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Guardian Cases of MenB linked to Canterbury nightclub have risen to 20, with two deaths, as experts warn of \u2018explosive\u2019 outbreak. Meningitis infections in a county in the south-east of England continue to increase, with five new cases confirmed on Wednesday in what experts have said is one of the fastest-growing outbreaks of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerging-infectious-diseases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11657,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11656\/revisions\/11657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}