ECDC is monitoring reports from three countries (France, the United Kingdom and the United States) of cases of invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) associated with travel to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).
Infection with Salmonella spp. is the second most reported zoonotic disease in humans with 60 050 reported cases in 2021 in the European Union (EU) and Salmonella is associated with the highest number of foodborne outbreaks. The overall EU trend of salmonellosis incidence for the years 2017 to 2021 have not changed significantly. To prevent foodborne diseases such as salmonellosis, human surveillance systems at different levels are essential to monitor the disease and to have an early detection and response to outbreaks.
This report presents the results of the 11th round of the external quality assessment (EQA-11) scheme for typing of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica organised for the national public health national reference laboratories (NPHRLs) in ECDC’s Food- and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses network (FWD-Net) managed by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). The EQA-11 scheme was arranged by the Section for Foodborne Infections at the Statens Serum Institut (SSI) in Denmark.
The Protocol is targeted at the national public health reference laboratories to guide the susceptibility testing needed for EU surveillance and the reporting to ECDC.
Between 15 March and 6 July 2021, 348 confirmed S. Braenderup sequence type 22 (ST22) cases were reported in 12 European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries and the United Kingdom (UK).
ECDC is supporting a large number of targeted External Quality Assessment (EQA) schemes with voluntary participation by reference or primary laboratories, which are active members of EU surveillance networks.
This report presents the results of the fourth round of the EQA on AST for national public health laboratories on Salmonella (hereafter Salmonella EQA4-AST) within the Food- and Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses Network (FWD-Net).
Between May 2018 and December 2020, 193 human cases of Salmonella Enteritidis sequence type (ST)11 were reported in Denmark (2), Finland (4), France (33), Germany (6), Ireland (12), the Netherlands (3), Poland (5), Sweden (6), and the United Kingdom (UK) (122). One in five cases was hospitalised. One death was reported. Fifty percent of the cases were children ≤ 18 years. The most recent case was reported by the UK in December 2020.
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.