2024-09-18 13:21:25
West Nile fever is spreading further and further in Europe. The number of deaths is rising. Infections are also being reported in Germany.
West Nile fever is – as the name suggests – a virus originally from Africa that was first detected in Europe in France in the 1960s. Infections are being discovered in horses and birds and are now also being discovered more frequently in humans.
According to the European health authority ECDC, infections are currently being reported from 16 countries: Albania, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Kosovo, Croatia, North Macedonia, Austria, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, Hungary and also Germany. Five cases have been discovered here so far, most recently last week in Diepholz (Lower Saxony), where the infection was discovered by chance in a blood donation. However, the number of unreported cases is likely to be significantly higher everywhere, as an infection is asymptomatic in 80 percent of cases.
However, if symptoms such as fever, chills, headaches, aching limbs, fatigue and a spotty rash appear, the infection can be dangerous for certain people.
Older and/or immunocompromised people in particular have an increased risk of complications after an infection. These include disease of the central nervous system, meningitis or even inflammation of the brain (encephalitis). Inflammation of other organs such as the heart or liver is less common. Studies have shown that in newly infected areas the rate of serious illness is one in 1,000 infected people, explained the chief virologist at the Charité, Christian Drosten, in an interview with the Funke Media Group.
And the number of deaths is rising. Greece reported 25 deaths following an infection, Italy 13 and Spain seven.
West Nile fever is not dependent on exotic mosquitoes such as the Asian tiger mosquito, but can also be transmitted by common mosquitoes. But here too, climate change can lead to a faster spread of the virus. The rising temperatures make it easier for the pathogen to overwinter in mosquitoes. “We can prove in the laboratory that viruses can multiply more quickly in mosquitoes when the temperatures are higher,” Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg told the German editorial network. “There is a clear causal connection to global warming.”
In Germany, the first infections with West Nile fever in humans were reported in eastern Germany in late summer 2019 (a total of 5 infections). In the following years, infections were also reported in eastern Germany (Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia) in the summer and autumn months (2020: 22 infections; 2021: four infections; 2022: 17 infections, 2023: six infections).