West Nile fever in Hungary: 16 infected last week

According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), 16 people were infected in Hungary between August 10 and 16 which was the highest number in the EU – reported hvg.hu. The altogether number of cases is 41: Greece reported 15, Romania 8 while Croatia 2 cases. From the neighbouring states of the EU 24 cases were reported, all from Serbia.

39 new infections this year, but nobody died

According to the ECDC, nobody died because of the disease in Hungary. However, Greece and Serbia were not that lucky, the former reported one while the latter two deaths because of it. Moreover, one affected area in Croatia reported human cases for the first time.

Five cases were reported from Bács-Kiskun county in Hungary while 3 from Pest county and 2 from Budapest. The altogether number of cases reported from Hungary is

39 this year and fortunately, nobody died because of it hitherto.

For example, in Serbia, 11 people died in the fever while this number is 4 in Greece, 3 in Italy and 1 in Kosovo and Romania. Last year there were 23 infections reported from Hungary.

Mosquito bites have to be avoided

The Hungarian news agency reported about the fever on August 2 for the first time when an official from the Ministry of Human Capacities said that the virus’s occurrence is not multitudinous in Hungary. She then added that prevention is very important because

the virus is carried in by migratory birds and it is spread by mosquitoes.

Humans get infected if infectious mosquitoes bite them, but there is no direct human-to-human transmission. On those territories on which the virus is present; however, blood donations have to be hung. Furthermore, if somebody spends at least one night in a place where there was an outbreak, he or she must not donate blood for 28 days.