As of 6 August 2013, the Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish public health institutes reported 106 cases associated with the hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection outbreak affecting their countries since 1 October 2012. Of these, 64 were confirmed and 42 were probable.
ECDC publishes today the results of its first point prevalence survey (PPS) on healthcare-associated infections and antimicrobial use in European hospitals. Based on findings from this survey, ECDC estimates that on any given day, one in 18 patients in European hospitals has at least one healthcare-associated infection. The report also presents data on the most commonly reported infections, which microorganisms are most commonly reported as causing them, how often antimicrobial drugs are being used to treat these infections and data on infection control structure and processes in the hospitals. More than 1 000 hospitals in 30 European countries participated in this first Europe-wide PPS.
WHO “SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands” is an annual campaign that makes part of major global effort to support healthcare workers to improve hand hygiene practices in hospitals and other healthcare facilities, and thus support the prevention of healthcare-associated infections.
Since the last epidemiological update on this multi-country hepatitis A outbreak published on 22 December 2017, 22 EU/EEA countries (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom-England) have reported 320 new outbreak-confirmed cases. The outbreak-confirmed cases are EU/EEA residents with laboratory-confirmed hepatitis A virus (HAV) genotype IA and a sequence with ≥99.3% homology to one of the three HAV genotype IA outbreak strains (VRD_521_2016; RIVM-HAV16-090; and V16-25801) based on overlapping fragments at the VP1-2a region.
Since the last rapid risk assessment on this multi-country hepatitis A outbreak, 19 EU/EEA countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom-England & Wales) have reported 1 363 new outbreak-confirmed cases. Outbreak-confirmed cases are EU/EEA residents with laboratory-confirmed hepatitis A virus (HAV) genotype IA and a sequence with 99.3% homology to one of the three HAV genotype IA outbreak strains (VRD_521_2016; RIVM-HAV16-090; and V16-25801) based on overlapping fragments at the VP1-2a region.
Following an invitation from Greek authorities, ECDC Director Marc Sprenger and experts from the ECDC Programmes for Sexually Transmitted Infections including HIV and blood-borne infections and Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare-associated Infections will visit Greece on 29 and 30 November 2012.
The study design and analysis controlled for influence of potentially confounding trends, such as improvement of day-care carriage and decreasing prevalence of smoking during the study period.
The sixth European Scientific Conference on Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology (ESCAIDE) opened today at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC).