I want to follow several work items and to be able to do this in bulk rather than having to go into each item and click 'follow'. I have created a query but can't see a way of getting updates on the status of each item within the query. Is this possible?
Unfortunately, there isn't the feature for now, there are two user voices to suggest the feature , you can go and vote them up to achieve it in future:
User Voice:
As a workaround, you can create a notification alert for the work items change. See Set alerts, get notified when changes occur for details.