Nine new human cases of West Nile fever have been reported in the EU and 27 in its neighbourhood over the past week. See the latest weekly West Nile fever maps.

From 8 to 10 October, senior public health professionals from 19 European countries participated in the third ‘training of trainers’ workshop organised by ECDC in Stockholm on “Development of public health programmes for prevention and control of seasonal influenza”.

As of 10 October, 18 cases have been confirmed and 191 probable cases are under investigation. In total, 26 patients have been hospitalised but only 11 are currently.

ECDC Director Marc Sprenger had his annual exchange of views with Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) at the European Parliament in Brussels.

As part of its ‘Insights into Health Communication’ series, ECDC has published an evidence review on the use of social marketing for the prevention and control of communicable disease.

The latest issue of ECDC’s series on 'Influenza virus characterisation’ covers the time period from January 2012 to September 2012.

The sixth European Conference on Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology (ESCAIDE) is now less than 3 weeks away. The deadline for on-line registration is Friday 12 October. After this date only registration on-site will be available.

On 3 October, the Public Health Authority of Portugal (Direção-Geral da Saúde) reported two cases of dengue infection in patients residing in the Autonomous Region of Madeira, Portugal.

A large gastroenteritis outbreak (more than 10 600 cases) has affected kindergarten and school children in Germany in five federal states in eastern Germany.

The Dengue case reported in the epidemiological update of 7 September has now been discarded based on additional laboratory results.

Conclusions and highlights from the workshop on vaccination and social media, organised by ECDC at the European European Health Forum Gastein.

ECDC monitoring shows that 5 037 cases of measles were reported by 29 EU and EEA countries from January to July 2012.

A complete list of ECDC peer-reviewed publications is now available online. From May 2005 to June 2012, ECDC produced over 300 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals.

During September 2012, health authorities were notified of two cases of severe human coronavirus infection caused by a novel virus type.

Twenty new human cases of West Nile fever have been reported for the EU and 33 for its neighbourhood over the past week.

No additional cases have been confirmed and there is no evidence of person-to-person transmission of this novel coronavirus to date. Based on the available information, ECDC assesses the current risk as low.

European, international and national public health authorities have been working closely together since the identification of two cases with a novel coronavirus became known. One case has died in Saudi Arabia and the second is in intensive care in a London hospital.

A novel coronavirus has been identified with laboratory tests in two patients both with severe respiratory and renal disease. Coronaviruses are a group of viruses causing respiratory infections in humans and animals.