Eurosurveillance - Volume 17, Issue 42, 18 October 2012

Non-specific symptoms of acute respiratory viral infections make it difficult for many countries without ongoing transmission of a novel coronavirus to rule out other possibilities including influenza before isolating imported febrile individuals with a possible exposure history. The incubation period helps differential diagnosis, and up to two days is suggestive of influenza. It is worth including the incubation period in the case definition of novel coronavirus infection.

Two cases of laboratory-confirmed listeriosis were detected in Bizkaia, Spain, at the end of August. The epidemiological investigation indicated that these two cases were associated with the consumption of Latin-style fresh cheese made from pasteurised milk in Portugal. Different batches of the same cheese were analysed and confirmed as contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. The product was withdrawn from the market and the population was advised not to consume this kind of cheese.

On 7 January 2011, a six year-old child living in a Roma community near Seville, southern Spain, was hospitalised with measles. Contact tracing identified a probable index case with onset of symptoms on 20 December 2011 and several unreported cases among children under the age of 15 years in the same town. The outbreak initially spread in districts in the city of Seville with a high proportion of Roma residents, and later to other cities and towns in Andalusia. While some towns experienced wide spread of the disease with significant clusters of cases, most of the affected locations saw non-clustered cases or very few secondary cases. The outbreak resulted in 1,759 confirmed or probable cases of which 393 (19%) required hospitalisation. Measles virus of genotype D4 was diagnosed in more than half of the cases. Significant differences (p<0.0001) by age group were found between clustered and non-clustered cases. The highest proportion of clustered cases occurred in the age group of 5-14 year-olds, while the highest proportion of non-clustered cases was seen in those older than 29 years. The last confirmed case related to this outbreak was reported on 20 August 2011.