Was response to 'unprecedented' meningitis outbreak too slow?

Some parents and students have accused health authorities of being too slow to react to the outbreak of meningitis in Kent which has seen two young people die and 13 treated in hospital, but the health secretary has said the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) acted as quickly and comprehensively as possible. On Friday night medics at East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust alerted the local branch of the UKHSA that they had a suspected case of invasive meningitis. It did not raise any particular sense of alarm among staff at the agency responsible for managing outbreaks. Meningococcal septicaemia, where patients become seriously ill with blood poisoning and inflammation of the brain, is classed as an urgent notifiable disease. Hospitals are duty bound to inform the health protection authorities when they have a suspected case - and UKHSA receives hundreds of these each year. What normally triggers a reg flag is when there are more than one. A second report came in on Saturday morning – but this time from France after an exchange student fell ill after returning home. Even then the alarm was not raised. The explanation given was that the students had lived at different private addresses and so