An employee at French nuclear fuel company Orano has died from meningitis, French health authorities said Friday, adding that there is seemingly “no link” with the ongoing outbreak in the U.K. The Normandy Regional Health Agency said it received a report of a case of invasive meningococcal disease in La Hague, Normandy, on Thursday, and that the death was announced on Friday. Authorities are currently identifying at-risk contacts, who will be offered antibiotics “as soon as possible.” The employee worked at Orano, the health authority said. “Around 50 potential contact cases have been identified and contacted by their managers in order to receive a specific preventive antibiotic treatment,” Orano told POLITICO. The patient died at Cherbourg hospital. Cherbourg is a key port for ferries to and from the U.K. The health authority said “no link can be established with the meningitis epidemic currently underway in the United Kingdom.” The U.K. is grappling with an ongoing outbreak of meningitis in the southeast county of Kent, linked to a local nightclub. As of Friday, 29 people have fallen ill and two people have died, the U.K. Health Security Agency said. Health Secretary Wes Streeting described the outbreak as “unprecedented.” Health officials have rolled out preventive antibiotics and vaccination to those who attended the nightclub between March 5-7, to close contacts of cases and to local university and school students. France reported one case to the U.K. last weekend in someone who had also visited the university then travelled to France. The French health ministry told POLITICO the patient was “stable,” that close contacts had been alerted and offered antibiotics, and that no further cases had been reported.

LONDON — A deadly outbreak of meningitis in the United Kingdom linked to a nightclub in England’s southeast has killed two people with new cases being reported daily. Health officials are rolling out preventive antibiotics to those who attended the nightclub earlier this month, to close contacts of cases and to local university students. The latter are also being offered a vaccine. But as U.K. health officials move to contain the outbreak, it has added to proliferating cases of meningitis across Europe — and has exposed patchy access to vaccines to prevent the disease. Since 2021 Europe has seen increasing rates of invasive meningococcal disease, which is caused by a bacterial infection. The majority of cases have been linked to the same “group B” family of bacteria that caused the outbreak in England.  POLITICO looked into how prepared EU countries are for a similar outbreak. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE UK? From March 13-18 some 27 cases of invasive meningococcal disease were identified in the southeast of England, the U.K. Health Security Agency said Thursday. Nine have been confirmed as Neisseria meningitidis group B.  At least 10 people who caught the illness had attended a nightclub in Canterbury from March 5-7. Most are students from the University of Kent in Canterbury or are upper-year students from local secondary schools.  The illnesses have been severe with rapid deterioration. Two young people have died: an 18-year-old high school student and a 21-year-old university student. Health Secretary Wes Streeting described the cases as “an unprecedented outbreak.” France reported one case to the U.K. in someone who had also visited the university then travelled to France, Streeting told parliament on Tuesday. “The patient has been hospitalized and is in stable condition,” a health ministry spokesperson told POLITICO, adding that close contacts had been alerted and offered antibiotics, and that no further cases had been reported. HOW IS THE UK RESPONDING? Health officials have set up four centers in and near Canterbury for students and those who attended the nightclub to receive preventive antibiotics. Family doctors in the region have been advised to offer treatment to anyone who visited the nightclub. “This is the main intervention that will help protect people and halt the spread of the outbreak,” said Trish Mannes from the U.K. Health Security Agency. In addition, “as a further precaution,” 5,000 university students are being contacted and offered a vaccine to protect against meningitis group B, Mannes said.  Nearby hospitals and schools have been told how to spot symptoms, how to prevent infection and respond.    A student receives an injection at the University of Kent campus in Canterbury, U.K. on March 19, 2026. | Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images HAVE CASES BEEN RISING ELSEWHERE? Since 2021, cases of invasive meningococcal disease in Europe have been rising. In 2023 there were 1,895 confirmed cases, including 200 deaths in the EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Group B remains the major cause of the disease, accounting for 57 percent of cases with known type, and was the dominant group in all ages under 65 years. “Its notification rate has been increasing since 2021,” a European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control report said. France, Germany and Spain accounted for 57 percent of all confirmed cases, while Belgium, the Netherlands and Lithuania reported the second highest notification rate. Group Y infections were the second-most reported (20 percent of cases with known serogroup) and the most reported in those over 65. Group W infections were the third-most reported overall (15 percent of cases with known serogroup). Around 20 percent of young people carry the MenB bacteria in their noses and throats; the disease happens when the bacteria enter the bloodstream and when a person’s immune system is low. It causes a high fever, headache, vomiting and drowsiness, and can lead to inflammation of the brain and sepsis. It has a mortality rate of around 10 percent. Those that survive are at risk of lifelong disability due to the amputations or brain damage caused by the infection. WHO CAN GET THE VACCINE? GlaxoSmithKline’s MenB vaccine Bexsero was approved in Europe (including the U.K.) in 2013 and was rolled out as routine vaccination in the U.K. to infants in 2015. Infants are most at risk due to their lack of immunity. There are over 100 different strains of MenB; the vaccine covers between 75 percent and 80 percent of them, said Adam Finn, professor emeritus of pediatrics at the University of Bristol. “The level of protection after 2 doses is very high and lasts for some years at least,” he added. Infections also arise in adolescents, but the U.K. hasn’t offered MenB vaccinations in older children since it was launched.  In Europe, 12 countries routinely offer the vaccine to infants for free —  the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal and Spain. Croatia and Poland offer it to children and adults with compromised immune systems. Austria recommends the vaccine in infants but doesn’t fund it. Meanwhile, 12 countries — Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden — don’t offer the vaccine at all. Seventeen EU countries offer vaccination against meningococcal serogroups A, C, Y and W. British Health Secretary Wes Streeting arrives in Downing Street in London for a Cabinet meeting on Jan. 17, 2026. | Zeynep Demir/Anadolu via Getty Images WHY ISN’T VACCINATION UNIVERSAL?  Each EU country takes advice from their independent immunization committees, which recommend which vaccines to offer citizens. “National epidemiology — based on surveillance data — and cost effectiveness considerations determine these decisions,” Beate Kampmann, professor of pediatric infectious diseases and immunology and professor of global health, told POLITICO. That means vaccine schedules in EU countries “differ as a result.” “MenB meningitis is a rare disease and the vaccine is expensive,” Brendan Wren, professor of microbial pathogenesis at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said of the U.K. position. “Although given to young children who are the most vulnerable to MenB, it is not freely available to the whole population.”  In light of the ongoing outbreak, however, Streeting told parliament that the country’s vaccination committee was reviewing whether to expand eligibility for the MenB jab. In 2019, Belgium’s immunization experts decided not to offer the vaccine to infants or adolescents, citing the low incidence of the disease, the need to administer three shots, and the fact the vaccine “is not very cost-effective.” The Netherlands said in 2022 that its Health Council wasn’t recommending the MenB vaccine “due to the relatively small burden of disease, the side effects of the vaccine and need for several doses, as well as cost.” But the council is now reviewing its position again, with a decision expected in the next quarter, a ministry spokesperson told POLITICO. COULD THE EU BUY VACCINES? The EU can procure vaccines for groups of countries, with the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority acting as a negotiator with drugmakers in such cases.  This could be an option for vaccines like Bexsero, should there be interest. “The Netherlands had a positive experience with the EU role in the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines and is open to discussing a role for the EU in other joint procurement procedures,” the Dutch health ministry said. Meanwhile, the vaccine is available for private purchase in most EU countries, but supplies in the U.K. are limited.  The EU can procure vaccines for groups of countries. | Alicia Windzio/picture alliance via Getty Images “Pharmacies are being inundated by requests from concerned patients for MenB vaccination, which the vast majority of our members across the country have no stock currently available to fulfil,” said Olivier Picard, chair of the National Pharmacy Association. COULD THE OUTBREAK SPREAD TO EUROPE? That’s unlikely since it’s not as easily transmitted among people. “This outbreak is caused by a bacterial infection and by its nature it is a lot less infectious compared to Influenza, Measles or SARCOV-2,” said Bharat Pankhania, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School. “These bacterial infections require close contact and it is a heavy droplet aerosol spread, thus not very infectious and you need to be in close prolonged contact with a case, a family member, or a kissing contact,” he said, adding there is no need for restrictions on movement. In Belgium, the health ministry said it is convening its scientific risk-assessment group “to evaluate the situation for our citizens and country.” Meanwhile, ECDC issued a statement Wednesday evening saying the risk to the general population in Europe from the British outbreak was “very low.” “Outbreaks of meningitis caused by Neisseria meningitidis typically occur in small clusters around cases or in places where many people gather. Although some secondary cases can occur among close contacts of cases, the disease does not spread in the community like, for example, a respiratory virus,” the disease agency said. Claudia Chiappa contributed to this article. Update: This article has been updated with UKHSA data issued March 19.

LUXEMBOURG — The European Commission didn’t want to reveal which staffers worked on Covid vaccine contract negotiations with pharma companies to avoid them being targeted by “conspiracy theorists,” its lawyers said Wednesday. A “lack of trust” about the contracts meant officials could have been subjected to “physical or psychological” harassment, said Antonios Bouchagiar, a Commission lawyer. “It’s a real risk in this case,” he added in a courtroom in Luxembourg.  The Commission is fighting a 2024 ruling from the EU’s General Court (the bloc’s lower court) that said it should have provided more details about the lucrative contracts — and the people negotiating them — when asked to do so by a group of Green MEPs and members of the public. The court ruled there was sufficient public interest in disclosing that information, saying: “It was only by having the names, surnames and details of the professional or institutional role of the members of the team in question that they could have ascertained whether or not the members of that team had a conflict of interests.” The Commission disagreed with that ruling and the case is now at the bloc’s highest court, the Court of Justice of the EU. The Commission signed six advance purchase agreements with pharma companies at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, promising to buy a certain amount of vaccines for European citizens as part of the EU’s bloc-wide approach to tackling the virus. The Green lawmakers said the public deserved to know more about how those contracts — worth millions of euros — came to be negotiated. When the MEPs made requests for access to documents, the Commission published redacted information. More than 3,000 members of the public, many of them skeptics of the EU’s approach and some hostile to mass vaccination policies, brought a separate legal action against the Commission. Lawyers for both the MEPs and the EU citizens were in court on Wednesday, arguing in front of a packed public gallery that the Commission should uphold the highest standards of transparency. “It is not some abstract aspiration,” said Raluca Gherghinaru, the lawyer for the MEPs, but a “constitutional value.” She added: “In crisis, we might expect leaders to be more accountable.” The Commission’s lawyers said the EU executive has already demonstrated a high level of accountability. Unredacted documents which prove that the negotiating team had no conflict of interest were studied by the European Court of Auditors, the lawyers said, adding that the anti-fraud agency (OLAF) and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) could look into the contracts if they felt that was necessary. Arnaud Durand, the lawyer for the members of the public who brought the case, argued that EPPO isn’t sufficiently independent because its budget is signed off by the Commission.  The Commission’s lawyers disputed that, saying independence is baked into EPPO and OLAF’s rules. The Commission also faced tough questioning from the president of the court, Koen Lenaerts, who asked: “Do you really mean that?” when Commission lawyers said that a request for access to information from a member of the public with a “lack of specific interest” should not automatically have to be complied with. Officials have “the right to work in serenity without having the finger pointed for some policy that they didn’t decide,” Bouchagiar said. But Lenaerts argued that the negotiations do not only take place at the highest political level but also at a technical level, and therefore any potential conflicts of interest of the civil servants involved deserve to be scrutinized. To laughter in the court, Lenaerts repeated the Commission’s argument that disclosing the names of staffers could lead to harassment, “particularly by conspiracy theorists.” Would disclosing those names “not be the best way of combating these conspiracy theorists?” he asked. The next step in the case will be a legal opinion on June 11 by Advocate-General Athanasios Rantos, which will guide the judges on their final ruling. No date has yet been given for that ruling. The EU’s Covid vaccine agreements have become a flashpoint for transparency campaigners, with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen coming under fire for her text messages with the CEO of Pfizer, which secured a multibillion-euro agreement with the Commission.  The Commission’s refusal to release von der Leyen’s messages came to be known as “Pfizergate.” The General Court ruled that the Commission was ultimately wrong not to reveal the messages.

BRUSSELS — An adviser to U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lauded Europe’s data on Covid-19 vaccines in front of European Parliament lawmakers on Wednesday. Robert W. Malone, one of RFK Jr.’s newly selected vaccine advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the United States can’t gather and analyze data as well as Europe does it, name-checking the Nordics and the U.K. especially for their systems. “One of the consequences is we can’t do, frankly, as good a job as you can do in epidemiology, which may be part of the reason why in some nation states, we’re getting better data on the Covid harms from Europe, the U.K., than we’re getting from the United States,” Malone said. That’s because, among other things, “we don’t have socialized medicine the same way you do, and we have barriers to ensure patient confidentiality,” he told right-wing MEPs gathered in the Parliament to launch the Make Europe Healthy Again (MEHA) movement with the Patriots for Europe group. Under RFK Jr., the U.S. has tried to reign in who can receive Covid-19 shots, which until recently were offered to everyone over 6 months of age at least once a year.   Europe diverged from American Covid-19 shot recommendations during the pandemic, restricting eligibility to those who would be at greatest risk from catching the virus as well as weighing the possible side effects. Younger men and teenagers, for example, appeared more susceptible to a rare heart condition after vaccination. RFK Jr., who has campaigned against the use of certain vaccines, has cited Europe’s approach to Covid-19 vaccination in his attempts to restrict who in the U.S. should receive it. He has also pushed for pregnant women to avoid using paracetamol (Tylenol), linking its use to increasing rates of autism in the U.S., under his Make America Health Again (MAHA) campaign.

BRUSSELS ― The deadline has passed for the European Commission to appeal an EU court judgment over President Ursula von der Leyen’s text message exchange with a vaccine-maker at the height of the Covid pandemic. It means the EU’s General Court finding in May will stand. The court ruled that the Commission failed to explain why messages shared between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla didn’t contain important information that would have required retention. In a case that became known as “Pfizergate,” reporters asked to see the messages after it was revealed in a 2021 New York Times interview with von der Leyen that she had exchanged texts with Bourla ahead of a multibillion-euro vaccine deal agreed between Pfizer and the EU. The case became a flashpoint for transparency activists who said it demonstrated the lack of accountability in von der Leyen’s Commission ― and for people who opposed the use of the vaccine in the first place. NO-CONFIDENCE VOTE The deadline for the EU executive to contest the decision in the EU’s top-tier Court of Justice passed earlier this month without the Commission appealing, a spokesperson for the EU courts confirmed. At the beginning of July, von der Leyen faced a no-confidence vote in the European Parliament over the case, triggered by right-wing Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea. While the Commission president easily survived the vote after the majority of MEPs backed her leadership, the debate became the first time she has publicly defended herself over the case. She told lawmakers in Strasbourg that some accusations leveled against her were “simply a lie.” Whether the Commission’s non-appeal means that the messages will be released is another matter. The court ruling conceded that retrieving the texts will be difficult, and a spokesperson for the Commission said that in line with the ruling it would provide “a more detailed explanation as to why it does not hold the requested documents.” The court “did not put into question the Commission’s registration policy regarding access to documents,” the spokesperson said, adding that the EU executive “remains fully committed to maintaining openness, accountability, and clear communication with all stakeholders, including EU institutions, civil society, and interest representatives.”