Students falling ill in York might have something more serious than fresher’s flu, the council’s public health lead has said following a recent meningitis outbreak.
City of York Council public health director Peter Roderick said the recent University of Kent outbreak which has killed two showed how quickly the disease could spread in closed communities.
He added students should be on the look out for symptoms and check them carefully rather than assuming they are something else and should contact the NHS if in doubt.
Mr Roderick said no cases of meningococcal disease, which causes meningitis and sepsis, have so far been recorded in York following the outbreak at the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus.
UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) officials said earlier this week the peak of the Kent outbreak had passed.
The agency has been notified of 20 confirmed and two suspended cases of meningococcal group B linked to the outbreak as of Wednesday, March 25.
The onset of meningitis, the inflammation of the lining of the brain, can be sudden.
Symptoms include a rash, a sudden high fever, severe and worsening headaches, a stiff neck and vomiting and diarrhoea.
Joint and muscle pain, a dislike of bright lights, very cold hands and feet, seizures, confusion and delirium and extreme tiredness and difficultly waking up can also indicate infection.
Mr Roderick said while isolated cases of the disease were not unusual, the recent spate of cases in Kent was major and serious.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) it underscored the need for students in particular to be vigilant and to make sure they are vaccinated.
Anyone can get the MenACWY vaccine for free from their GP if they did not have it at school up to the age of 25.
Many people will have had vaccines as children or teenagers but levels of immunity can vary.
Mr Roderick said: “Meningococcal disease has a particular profile where it spreads in closed communities like hostels, prisons, military barracks and now more often among students, particularly those in their first year who’ve moved from many different parts of the country.
“The disease can differ from region to region, so when you’ve got people coming together who have different levels of immunity it can be transmitted more easily.
“What’s happened in Kent is genuinely unprecedented, before we’ve had one or two cases in a family and multiple cases at once globally but for England this is serious.
“The speed at which it was travelling through a group of people who’d attended the same venue within a couple of days of each other and the seriousness of some of the symptoms was concerning.
“The symptoms can sometimes be similar to other self-resolving conditions like coughs or colds.
“There’s students here in York who are in a new city and don’t have their families on hand, they may not be sure if they’re vaccinated or not and they’re living a different pattern of life where they’re perhaps drinking a little more or sleeping and getting up at different times.
“It can be easy to mistake symptoms like a bad headache for something else, so I would say to students if you’re in doubt ring the NHS 111 line.
“Watch out for your mates, if your friend or house mate gets seriously ill at uni it might not just be fresher’s flu, it’s all part of our duty to watch out for each other.”
He said there are plenty of meningitis vaccines available for those who need them in York.
It comes after the BBC reported a local pharmacist had warned supplies were nowhere near able to meet demand.
Monkbar Pharmacy’s Vikki Furneaux told the BBC students and their parents had been requesting the vaccine following the Kent outbreak.
“We’ve got plenty of stocks of MenB vaccines for what we need them for, but I don’t want people knocking down the doors of pharmacies in York to get one,” he said.
