This report provides an analysis of the external quality assessment (EQA) for the antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) performance of laboratories participating in the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Network (EARS-Net) in 2019. A total of 952 laboratories (1–95 per country) from 30 EU/EEA countries participated in the EQA exercise.
Shigellosis is a relatively uncommon disease in the European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA), but remains of concern in some countries and for some population groups. For 2017, 30 EU/EEA countries reported 6 337 confirmed shigellosis cases.
This issue of the ECDC Communicable Disease Threats Report (CDTR) covers the period 24-30 November 2019 and includes updates on Ebola virus disease, Lassa fever, influenza, cholera, polio and West Nile virus.
On 20 and 24 November 2019, respectively, the Dutch public health authorities confirmed two imported cases of Lassa fever from Sierra Leone. Both were Dutch healthcare workers who worked in a rural hospital in Sierra Leone.