Weekly influenza surveillance overview, week 40, 1-7 October 2012

Surveillance report

12 October 2012

The weekly/bi-weekly influenza surveillance overview is a collection of timely and relevant information regarding influenza activity in Europe. It provides key statistical data on a variety of issues including the following: sentinel surveillance of influenza-like illness and acute respiratory illness; virological surveillance; hospital surveillance of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI); mortality surveillance and qualitative reporting. An up-to-date report is available on Fridays

Executive Summary

The publication – analysing the main epidemiological and virological developments in the previous week – shows that in week 40 (03 Oct 2011 – 09 Oct 2011), all countries providing data to the European Surveillance System (TESSy) database reported low influenza activity.

In particular, the majority of the countries reported absence of geographic spread and only Cyprus and France reported some sporadic activity.

In relation to the virological data, only two specimens (1,6%) were tested positive for influenza out of 123 sentinel specimens. More details on influenza viruses that circulated in 2011 can be found in the August–September report prepared by the Community Network of Reference Laboratories (CNRL) coordination team.

This data indicate that the annual influenza epidemics have not yet started across Europe. However, even if epidemics usually being later in the season, surveillance always starts after week 40.

ECDC will issue these weekly summaries every Friday throughout the surveillance season until Week 20/2012, when the surveillance season will end. After that week, ECDC will continue publishing fortnightly summaries.

Publication file

Weekly-influenza-surveillance-overview-121012.pdf

English (1.64 MB - PDF)

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