Last night Dr. Lee Harrison of UPMC discussed meningococcal meningitis at the Baltimore Tropical Medicine Club. Some highlights included the fact that the US is at an all-time low of meningococcal meningitis (despite the Princeton and UCSB outbreaks) and that serotype X (which there is no vaccine for) has been causing invasive disease in the meningitis belt in Africa.
The Novartis serotype B vaccine, approved for use in the EU and Australia, is now being distributed to the Princeton University population in an investigational manner. It remains to be seen what the impact of his vaccine, for which no hard efficacy data is yet available, will be at Princeton and the rest of the world.