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).