A number of European countries (including Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom) indicate an increase seen during 2022, particularly since September 2022, in the number of cases of invasive Group A Streptococcus (iGAS) disease among children less than ten years of age.
This issue of the ECDC Communicable Disease Threats Report (CDTR) covers the period 4 – 10 December 2022 and includes updates on COVID-19, Ebola virus, respiratory syncytial virus, streptococcal infection, diphtheria, seasonal influenza, mpox (monkeypox), hepatitis, MERS-CoV, meningitis, and mass gathering monitoring at the FIFA World Cup 2022 Qatar.
The laboratories participating in the QA21 EQA scheme for antimicrobial susceptibility testing of N. gonorrhoeae showed good levels of competency and capability in recovering and testing strains of unknown phenotype.
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.