‘Something I’ve never felt since Covid. It was scarier’: the shock and pain of Kent’s meningitis outbreak

How infections linked to a nightclub escalated into a public health incident requiring a national response is a puzzle experts are still grappling with

Tyra Skinner had already been violently sick three times when doctors at Kent's William Harvey hospital realised something was badly wrong. The 20-year-old was rushed into critical care, racked with a pounding headache, a stiff neck and excruciating pain - the hallmark symptoms of meningitis, the disease that had already claimed two young lives in Kent.

She could hardly move, she was in a foetal position. She was so cramped up and sore," her father, Dale Skinner, 42, told the Guardian. It was horrendous, to be honest, to see her so helpless and in so much pain."