This study provides insights for national public health authorities into the factors behind the spread of vaccine misinformation online and the options and capacities needed for responding to it.
This issue of the ECDC Communicable Disease Threats Report (CDTR) covers the period 25 April - 1 May 2021 and includes updates on Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, COVID-19, Ebola virus disease and dengue.
For 2018, 63 cases of diphtheria were reported to ECDC; 62 due to toxigenic Corynebacterium diphtheriae or C. ulcerans and one case with an unknown pathogen. The highest proportion of C. ulcerans cases was among adults 65 years and over, whereas C. diphtheriae cases were more common in younger age groups. Among the C. diphtheriae cases, 60% were reported as imported. High vaccination coverage is crucial to prevent diphtheria.
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.