This autumn, cases of West Nile virus and Zika virus infections due to transmission by infected mosquitoes have occurred locally for the first time in Germany and France. These cases of locally acquired infections are also named autochthonous cases. Several infectious agents, some of them just newly identified, have spread globally over the past years, […]
In spring 2019, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) called upon countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to prepare for possible outbreaks of dengue fever. Since the 1980ies, there were dengue virus epidemics in this region, at intervals of some years. The last one occurred in 2013, with over two million disease cases. This
According to a current publication of the European Centre for Prevention and Control of Diseases (ECDC), this year’s total number of cases exceeds the total number of West Nile fever (WNF) cases in Europe of the past five years by far. WNV belongs to the most widely distributed flaviviruses. West Nile fever (WNF), caused by
Over the past years, a global spread of a multitude of new viruses and other pathogens has been observed, leading to previously unknown diseases. Lately, there was an increase in epidemics of vector-borne infectious diseases, especially in tropical regions. Alongside dengue and chikungunya fever, Zika fever, which spread in large parts of the South American
In its recent epidemiological bulletin (no. 15) the German Robert Koch Institute reports about exceedingly high numbers of hantavirus infections in Germany. In total, 1,713 cases had been registered in 2017 – in the previous year, there were only 298. Indeed, the number of infections fluctuates considerably from year to year. Also 2007, 2010 and 2012 were
