Generally, reporting of influenza has been less complete over weeks 51 and 52 due to the holiday period, which reduces consulting rates and reporting to national centres and subsequently onto ECDC. Nevertheless, in week 52/2010, 15 of the 25 countries reported increasing trends of influenza activity.
The fourth edition of the Annual Epidemiological Report on Communicable Diseases in Europe provides a comprehensive summary of surveillance data for 2008.
This edition of the Annual Report gives special attention to vaccine-preventable diseases and immunisation programmesin the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) countries. This edition was revised January and June 2010 and has authority over the print edition.
In order to increase preparedness to respond to possible cases and clusters of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A/H5N1 in humans in Europe, the ECDC has prepared a toolkit for the European Union member states.