Tuberculosis - Annual Epidemiological Report for 2020

Surveillance report
Publication series: Annual Epidemiological Report
Time period covered: This report is based on data for 2020 retrieved from The European Surveillance System (TESSy) on 5 April 2022.
Cite:

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Tuberculosis. In: ECDC. Annual epidemiological report for 2020. Stockholm: ECDC; 2022.

For 2020, 29 countries in the European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) reported a total of 33 148 tuberculosis (TB) cases (7.3 per 100 000 population).

Executive Summary

The overall notification rate continued to fall, as did most country-specific rates. However, the EU/EEA is still not on track to reach the goal of ending the TB epidemic by 2030.

The decline in total case numbers and notification rates in 2020 should be interpreted with caution, given the potential impact on TB clinical services and surveillance across the EU/EEA of measures put in place to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rifampicin resistance/multidrug resistance (RR/MDR) was reported for 4.2% of TB cases with drug susceptibility testing results reported. Extensive drug resistance (XDR) was reported for 45.1% of MDR TB cases that underwent second-line drug susceptibility testing.

HIV status was reported by 19 countries for 73.4% of their total TB cases, and of TB cases with known HIV status, 4.2% were HIV-positive.

Treatment success was achieved in 71.8% of all TB cases notified in 2019, 55.1% of HIV-co-infected TB cases notified in 2019, 52.4% of RR/MDR TB cases notified in 2018, and 38.5% of XDR TB cases notified in 2017.