The ECDC communicable disease threats report is a weekly bulletin intended for epidemiologists and health professionals in the area of communicable disease prevention and control.
In May 2012 a collection of five strains of Haemophilus spp was sent to 28 participating reference laboratories in the IBD-labnet surveillance network for quality assurance testing. The laboratories were asked to characterise the five strains by performing standard laboratory protocols for the methods usually used by the laboratory for: species identification, biotyping and serotyping by serological methods and/or PCR.
The results of this EQA are published in the this report.
A vaccine is available which protects against the varicella virus; however policies on vaccine use vary across the EU. Varicella vaccination for all children is only recommended at national level in five countries (for the list of those countries see the ECDC vaccine scheduler). In most countries vaccination is available for adolescents without history of varicella and for the people who have higher risk of coming into contact with the varicella virus, like healthcare workers.
Varicella (chickenpox) is caused by the varicella-zoster virus (VZV), which also causes shingles. The virus spreads through the body into the skin causing rashes to appear.
The results of this external quality assurance distribution have shown that European Haemophilus reference laboratories differ in the level of characterisation of strains, ranging from simple speciation to full identification and typing. All but two laboratories routinely phenotypically serotype isolates. Fifteen laboratories (52%) performed PCR-based capsular genotyping, 23 laboratories (79%) reported antimicrobial susceptibility testing results.
This letter to the editor raises the issue of the adaptation of B. pertussis to vaccine selection pressure as one of the reasons for the increase number of cases of whooping cough reported in several countries.