The ECDC communicable disease threats report is a weekly bulletin intended for epidemiologists and health professionals in the area of communicable disease prevention and control.
This report on EQA performance shows that European Reference Laboratories for Meningococci differ in their capacities and the level of characterisation of the distributed N. meningitidis material, but that there have been improvements since the first ECDC IBD-labnet distribution.
The ECDC communicable disease threats report is a weekly bulletin intended for epidemiologists and health professionals in the area of communicable disease prevention and control.
This rapid risk assessment provides a series of conclusions and recommendations based on the analysis of several European cases of invasive meningococcal disease among men who have sex with men caused by N. meningitidis serogroup C.
New and noteworthy in this update: the retrospective identification of novel coronavirus in biological samples from two fatal cases in Jordan (April 2012) and the results of a joint ECDC/WHO survey which confirms that EU/EEA Member States have an adequate capacity to detect novel coronavirus through their network of national reference laboratories: 18 of 30 in EU/EEA countries are capable of confirming positive screened samples by either ORF1b RT-PCR or other target RT-PCR assays with sequence analysis or whole-genome sequence analysis.
CDC updated risk assessment concludes that in the absence of evidence of sustained person-to-person transmission outside of household settings, the current facts still point towards a hypothesis of a zoonotic or environmental source with occasional transmission to exposed humans. WHO does not advise any travel or trade restrictions at this point for KSA or Qatar.
An outbreak of aseptic meningitis associated to a kindergarten in Suceava city in northern Romania has been reported. A total of 62 cases of enterovirus have been reported identified in the city and wider district, 53 cases of which have led to aseptic meningitis. ECDC has prepared a rapid risk assessment on the outbreak