As news of the meningitis outbreak spread in Canterbury over the last couple of days, the mood in the city reminded me of the first edgy days of the Covid-19 epidemic in 2020, before we knew the real deadliness of the danger.

Sarah and Shay, both 19, were getting their antibiotic pills yesterday at Westgate Hall inside the walled city of Canterbury. They had been to Club Chemistry, which was identified as the hub for the spread of the illness, on Saturday, 7 March. Yet they did not appear too worried, saying: “We had a good night at the club, which was very crowded, but when we heard about the meningitis yesterday, our mums told us to go and get a pill. It is all very like Covid.”

As the number of confirmed and unconfirmed cases rises to 20, it will become clear in the next few days how far the illness has spread beyond a single superspreader event.

Some 2,500 people at the University of Kent and in Canterbury City have received antibiotics and will be eligible to receive a meningitis B vaccination from today. But a vaccination campaign will be more difficult than it might appear because the campus already looks empty. A member of the university kitchen staff, who could see how many students were getting meals, told me that “numbers always go down at this time of year, but this has been sped up because of the outbreak.” In other words, much of the student body is already distributed around the country.

Overall, parents appear more worried than their student children about the outbreak. Some parents had turned up at 1.30am on Monday at the University of Kent to ferry students back home. This was after they had heard that two students, one at the university and the other a Year 13 pupil at sixth form in nearby Faversham, had died and another 18 were ill in hospital.

Those most seriously frightened by the potential epidemic have already left the........

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