France reports first human case of Shamonda virus, but says there's no public health risk
Seven Lights
France has recorded the first-ever documented human infection with the Shamonda virus, a livestock virus most commonly found in cattle, France 24 reported. French health authorities said Thursday that the virus had been detected in a severely immunocompromised patient who died earlier this month, and that there did not appear to be any health risk to the public, describing the infection as “an exceptional case,” France 24 said.
According to Euronews, the patient was in Lyon and died in early October. Euronews reported that authorities confirmed the case as the first known human infection with the virus, which had previously been found only in animals, and added that there was no health risk to the general population. Sky News also reported that the first human case of the Shamonda virus was detected in France in a person who later died, according to authorities.
In a joint statement, France’s health and agriculture ministries said there was “no health risk to the general public identified at this time” and that the human infection appeared to be “an exceptional case involving a severely immunocompromised patient” who had been hospitalised for a serious medical condition, France 24 reported. “Despite circulating in Africa and Asia for several decades, the Shamonda virus has never previously been detected in humans,” the ministries said.
The patient was believed to have contracted the virus through the bite of a midge in eastern France, where the virus had been circulating in animals during the spring and summer, the ministries said, according to France 24. “The neurological complications observed in the immunocompromised patient prior to his death are very likely linked to infection with the Shamonda virus,” the ministries added, citing preliminary findings, while noting that clinical, biological and epidemiological investigations were still ongoing.
The virus, which belongs to the Orthobunyavirus group, was first detected in Nigeria in the mid-1960s and has since been reported in cattle in several parts of Africa and in Japan, France 24 reported. Transmitted by biting midges, it is most commonly found in cattle but has also been found in horses, alpacas, sheep and goats, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH).
The virus was detected in Europe for the first time at the end of July, including on cattle farms in France, the French ministries said. It has since been detected in 14 countries in western Europe, according to an epidemiological bulletin from France’s national research institute that monitors animal health, France 24 reported. Cattle are considered the main animal hosts, although sporadic infections in smaller livestock and horses have also been identified in France this summer.
In cattle, the main symptoms are acute diarrhoea, fever, lethargy and a drop in milk production; a study of nine dairy farms in France found milk output fell by as much as 75 percent in affected herds, France 24 reported. There are currently no commercially available vaccines against the Shamonda virus, WOAH said. The investigation is ongoing and both the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control have been notified, France 24 reported.