This report presents the results of the fifth round of the external quality assessment (EQA-5) scheme for typing of Listeria monocytogenes organised for laboratories in the Food- and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses Network (FWD-Net).
More than half of the severe listeriosis cases in the European Union belong to clusters, many of which are not being picked up fast enough by the current surveillance system, suggests a new article published in Eurosurveillance. The large-scale study looked into listeriosis epidemiology through whole genome sequencing and found that this method, when implemented at EU-level, could lead to faster detection of multi-country outbreaks, saving up to 5 months of the investigations.
A multi-country outbreak of Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica serovar Agona (S. Agona) is under investigation in the European Union (EU), with cases retrospectively identified back to 2014.
The seroincidence calculator utilises the combination of serum antibody levels (lgG, lgM, and lgA) at a given point in time to estimate the time since seroconversion, which in turn gives an estimate of annual 'force of infection' in the tested population.
This document provides an updated assessment of the cross-border public health risk associated with consumption of frozen corn and possibly linked to other frozen vegetables contaminated with L. monocytogenes.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control was asked by the European Commission to assess the risk involved in changing the testing requirements for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and hepatitis C virus (HCV) with regard to the quality and safety of non-partner semen donations.
After the EPIS FWD notification of a cluster of hepatitis A cases infected with two distinct strains in several EU/EEA countries, this risk assessment presents the early findings of this multi-country hepatitis A outbreak and sets out initial options for response.
Since the publication of the rapid risk assessment on a multi-country outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes serogroup IVb, multi-locus sequence type 6 (MLST 6) on 6 December 2017, four EU Member States reported seven new confirmed outbreak cases. Two of these cases were fatal.
This external quality assessment (EQA) to assess the ability of national reference laboratories from EU/EEA Member States to correctly perform laboratory serodiagnostic tests for pertussis was a collaborative study organised from February to April 2016.
In order to explore whether the current capacity for EU/EEA-wide molecular characterisation for surveillance of HBV and HCV is sufficient to be feasible and what gaps need to be addressed, a survey of EU/EEA Member States was conducted to assess their laboratory capacity and needs in relation to the molecular characterisation of hepatitis B and C.