ECDC and the WHO Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe) recently concluded a crucial joint meeting focused on enhancing tuberculosis (TB) surveillance and monitoring across the WHO European Region.
In a concerted effort to combat healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the Belgian EU Presidency on 6-7 May co-hosted a conference at the national public health institute of Belgium, Sciensano, in Brussels.
Nearly 7,000 excess deaths from tuberculosis occurred in the WHO European Region in the three years of the pandemic from 2020 - 2022, compared to what experts had expected based on pre-2020 estimates.
During the 2023 West Nile virus transmission season, and as of 4 January 2024, 709 locally acquired human cases of West Nile virus infection, including 67 deaths, were reported by nine European Union countries.
Since the most recent ECDC rapid risk assessment in 2021, the number of EU/EEA countries reporting hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae (hvKp) sequence type (ST) 23 has increased from four to ten and the number of cases reported to ECDC by the countries, increased from 12 to 143.
The food-borne infections listeriosis and shigatoxigenic Escherichia coli are increasing in the EU/EEA and were in 2022 at levels higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.