EU One Health report: drop in reported zoonotic diseases in humans and foodborne outbreaks in 2020

Experts acknowledged the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe in the remarkable drop in reported zoonotic diseases in humans – ranging from 7% to 53% depending on the reported disease in question - and foodborne outbreaks.

Possible factors behind the large decrease in cases include changes in health seeking behaviour, restrictions on travel and on events, the closing of restaurants, quarantine, lockdown, and other mitigation measures such as the use of masks, physical distancing and hand sanitisation.  

The next most commonly reported diseases were yersiniosis (5 668) and infections caused by Shigatoxin-producing E.coli (4 446). Listeriosis was the fifth most reported zoonosis (1 876 cases), mainly affecting people over the age of 64.

Listeriosis and West Nile virus infections were the diseases with the highest case fatality and hospitalisation rates – with most locally acquired human infections of West Nile virus reported in Greece, Spain and Italy.

The report also monitors foodborne outbreaks in the EU, events during which at least two people contract the same illness from the same contaminated food. A total of 3 086 foodborne outbreaks were reported in 2020. Salmonella remained the most frequently detected agent and caused about 23% outbreaks. The most common sources of salmonellosis outbreaks were eggs, egg products and pig meat.

The report also includes data on Mycobacterium bovis/caprae, Brucella, Trichinella, Echinococcus, Toxoplasma gondii, rabies, Q fever and tularaemia.

EFSA is publishing two interactive communication tools on foodborne outbreaks – a story map and a dashboard. The story map provides general information on foodborne outbreaks, their causative agents and implicated food vehicles. The dashboard allows people to search and query the large amount of data on foodborne outbreaks collected by EFSA from EU Member States and other reporting countries since 2015.