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.
Rabies is a deadly disease and endemic in over 100 countries. It causes around 59,000 human deaths annually, the vast majority in Asia and Africa. There are safe and effective human vaccines for pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis. With a prompt and proper post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), exposed people have a survival rate close to 100%.
This issue of the ECDC Communicable Disease Threats Report (CDTR) covers the period 8-14 December 2019 and includes updates on Ebola virus disease, poliomyelitis, West Nile virus, measles, influenza A(H9N2), influenza, rabies and Plasmodium vivax malaria cases.