Hepatitis A cases in 2021 were at their lowest levels since EU-level hepatitis A surveillance began in 2007, while five other food and waterborne diseases are rising towards pre-pandemic levels. The information is revealed in the Annual Epidemiological Report 2021, of which six chapters are published today by ECDC.
In 2021, 30 EU/EEA countries reported 3 864 cases of hepatitis A (Table 1). The EU/EEA notification rate was 0.9 cases per 100 000 population. In 2021, both the lowest number of reported cases and the lowest notification rate were reported since the beginning of EU-level hepatitis A surveillance in 2007. The total number of hepatitis A cases reported in EU/EEA countries in 2021 represented a decrease of 65.7% and 12.3% compared to 2019 and 2020, respectively.
You may already know about PrEP - the pill one takes to reduce the risk of acquiring HIV. But did you know there is also PEP - the post-exposure prophylaxis - that is used after one may have been exposed to the HIV virus.
This report is the latest in a series published jointly by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the WHO Regional Office for Europe that has been reporting data on HIV and AIDS in the WHO European Region and in the European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) since 2007.
By 2021, 48 of 55 countries in Europe and Central Asia provided data on at least one stage of the continuum of HIV care (compared to 40 countries in 2018). A total of 47 countries were able to provide data for at least two consecutive stages of the continuum (compared to 45 in 2020) and 40 countries provided data on all four stages.