Víctor Rodríguez Prieto & José Manuel Sánchez-Vizcaíno
October 1st, 2012.  SUAT-UCM

The second season of Schmallenberg disease has begun.

     In the first epidemic wave Schmallenberg virus (SBV) infection affected eight countries in the European Union: Germany (December 2011), Netherlands (December 2011), Belgium (December 2011), United Kingdom (January 2012), France (January 2012), Italy(February 2012), Luxembourg (February 2012) and Spain (March 2012). Though the end of the season was declared to be at the end of May 2012, Denmark declared the first fetus affected by the SBV infection in June in the island of Funen (Figure 1, detail), while some weeks before antibodies against the virus were found in cattle in Jutland (Figure 1, detail). Moreover, the virus was detected in pools of midges of the genus Culicoides (species unknown yet) caught in October 2011, which means SBV has been circulating in very northern latitudes.

 

Víctor Rodríguez Prieto & José Manuel Sánchez-Vizcaíno
September 17th, 2012.  SUAT-UCM

Situation of West Nile in european environment in 2012.

In the European Union West Nile (WN) cases have only been reported during 2012 in equine in Greece and Croatia (Figure 1). Greece began suffering the disease in horses in 2010. Since then, at least 59 horses have been affected by the WN virus infection. As for Croatia, this is the first time that WN outbreaks are reported, having affected six horses. This is not surprisingly, given the active movement that the virus is having in recent years in the area (Figure 1). Although official data is not available yet, it is likely that lineage 2 is the responsible for the outbreaks in both countries.

Fig. 1. West Nile outbreaks in horses in Europe and the Mediterranean from 1999 to 2012. 
The blue stars show the outbreaks reported during 2012 in Croatia and Greece 
(Source: self elaboration with data from WAHID-OIE; last update September 17th, 2012).

The European Society for Veterinary Virologyat its IX Congress elected Sánchez-Vizcaíno as its new ESVV president succeeding current president Professor Sándor Belák.

Galería

Madrid, September 2012: IX International Congress of Veterinary Virology

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