West Nile Virus Positive Blood Donation and Subsequent Entomological Investigation, Austria, 2014

Kolodziejek, Jolanta; Seidel, Bernhard; Jungbauer, Christof; Dimmel, Katharina; Kolodziejek, Michael; Rudolf, Ivo; Hubálek, Zdenek; Allerberger, Franz; Nowotny, Norbert

Independent introductions of two different WNV lineage 2 strains from Africa to Europe occurred recently: the first strain was introduced to Central Europe (South-Eastern Hungary) in or before 2004 [12] , dispersed all over Hungary and the eastern part of Austria in 2008 [5] , [6] , has spread in the following years via the Balkan Peninsula [25] to Southern European countries [26] , [27] , and arrived to the Czech Republic in 2013 [11] , while the other strain emerged in Eastern Europe (Russia and Romania) since 2007 and 2010, respectively [28] , [29] , [4] . Both strains have been responsible for several outbreaks in the EU with 128 autochthonous cases reported in 2011, 242 in 2012, and 228 in 2013 (http://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/ healthtopics/west_nile_fever/West-Nile-fever-maps/Pages/historical-data.aspx), with case fatality rates of 8% in Romania in 2010 [29] , 15% in Greece between 2010 and 2011 [30] and about 10% in Italy between 2008 and 2012 [31] . In 2014, apart from the Austrian case, 73 further human cases of WNV infection have been reported in the EU and 136 in neighboring countries (http://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/healthtopics/west_nile_fever/West-Nile-fever-maps/ pages/index.aspx).