This rapid risk assessment assesses the public health threat of a recently reported cluster of acute fatal encephalitis in three squirrel breeders in Germany, possibly related to an infection with a newly identified bornavirus.
The threat of serious, cross-border infectious disease outbreaks in Europe is a significant challenge in terms of emergency preparedness. In order to effectively target the use of resources to manage the risks of outbreak, it is necessary to formulate rankings or prioritisation of human and/or animal pathogens. This literature review aims to identify the range of methods used to prioritise communicable disease threats for the purposes of emergency preparedness planning.
New and noteworthy in this update: the retrospective identification of novel coronavirus in biological samples from two fatal cases in Jordan (April 2012) and the results of a joint ECDC/WHO survey which confirms that EU/EEA Member States have an adequate capacity to detect novel coronavirus through their network of national reference laboratories: 18 of 30 in EU/EEA countries are capable of confirming positive screened samples by either ORF1b RT-PCR or other target RT-PCR assays with sequence analysis or whole-genome sequence analysis.
CDC updated risk assessment concludes that in the absence of evidence of sustained person-to-person transmission outside of household settings, the current facts still point towards a hypothesis of a zoonotic or environmental source with occasional transmission to exposed humans. WHO does not advise any travel or trade restrictions at this point for KSA or Qatar.