A collaborative study between ECDC, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Union Reference Laboratory (EURL) for Listeria monocytogenes* found a relatively high degree of dissemination of certain listeriosis bacteria in the food chain and in the human population across the European Union (EU).
Since the latest ECDC-EFSA rapid outbreak assessment published on 12 December 2017, 15 EU/EEA countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden and United Kingdom) have reported 336 confirmed, 94 probable and 3 new historical-confirmed cases associated with this ongoing multi-country outbreak of Salmonella Enteritidis in the EU/EEA.
Ready-to-eat salmon products, such as cold-smoked and marinated salmon, are the likely source of an outbreak of listeriosis that has affected Denmark, Germany and France since 2015.
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.
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.
ECDC monitors and reports on influenza transmission and virus circulation in Europe on a weekly basis throughout the flu season, in collaboration with WHO Regional Office for Europe, in the report Flu News Europe.
Since the previous ECDC epidemiological update was published on 30 June 2017, seven EU/EEA countries (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) have reported 96 confirmed and 34 probable new cases associated with the multi-country outbreak of Salmonella Enteritidis with MLVA profiles 2-9-7-3-2 or 2-9-6-3-2 ongoing in the EU/EEA.
Since the ECDC and EFSA joint rapid outbreak assessment was published on 7 March 2017, six EU Member States (Belgium, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) have reported 50 confirmed and 12 probable new cases associated with the multi-country outbreak of Salmonella Enteritidis phage type 8 infections (MLVA profiles 2-9-7-3-2 and 2-9-6-3-2) ongoing in the EU/EEA. In addition, twelve probable cases have been reclassified as confirmed.
ECDC gathered guidance documents on prevention and control of infection with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) available online, published by EU/EEA Member States, ECDC, other agencies and scientific societies.
An international consensus study on standardisation of a widely developed molecular subtyping method for Salmonella Typhimurium, multiple loci variable-number tandem repeat analysis (MLVA), was published by Nadon et al. in Eurosurveillance on 29 August 2013