2021年流行病学年度报告

Hantavirus infection Annual Epidemiological Report for 2021 Key facts •For 2021, 29 European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries reported 4 860 cases ofhantavirus infection (1.1 cases per 100 000 population).•The year marked the highest rate recorded for the period 2017–2021 during which the overall notificationrate fluctuated between 0.4 and 1.1 cases per 100 00 population.•Two countries (Finland and Germany) accounted for 63.7% of all reported cases.•Prevention is mainly based on rodent control, avoidance of contact with rodent excreta (urine, saliva ordroppings), and disinfection of areas contaminated by rodent excreta. Introduction Hantaviruses are rodent-borne viruses that can be transmitted to humans by contact with faeces/urine frominfected rodents, or with dust containing infective particles [1]. There are several hantaviruses, with differentgeographical distributions and causing different clinical diseases. Hantaviruses are usually specific to certain rodentreservoir hosts. Three main clinical syndromes can be distinguished after hantavirus infection: haemorrhagic feverwith renal syndrome (HFRS), mainly caused by Seoul virus, Puumala virus (PUUV) and Dobrava virus (DOBV)prevalent in Europe; nephropathia epidemica, a mild form of HFRS caused by PUUV; and hantaviruscardiopulmonary syndrome, which may be caused by Andes virus, Sin Nombre virus, and several others prevalentin the Americas. The clinical presentation varies from subclinical, mild, and moderate to severe, depending in parton the causative agent of the disease. There is no curative treatment and eliminating, or minimising contact withrodents is the best way to prevent infection. Methods This report is based on data for 2021 retrieved from The European Surveillance System (TESSy) on 25 October2022. TESSy is a system for the collection, analysis and dissemination of data on communicable diseases. For a detailed description of methods used to produce this report, refer to the ‘Methods’ chapter [2]. An overview of the national surveillance systems is available online [3]. A subset of the data used for this report is available through ECDC’s online ‘Surveillance atlas of infectiousdiseases’ [4]. In 2021, of the 29 EU/EEA reporting countries, 27 reported case-based data and two countries (Belgium and Bulgaria)reported aggregate data. Twenty countries used the EU case definition for viral haemorrhagic fevers, five countriesused an alternative case definition, and four countries did not specify the definition used. Surveillance wascomprehensive in all countries except Belgium (sentinel system) and Cyprus (unspecified) and was mostly passive. No data for 2020–2021 were reported by the United Kingdom (UK) due to its withdrawal from the EU on 31January 2020. Suggested citation: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Hantavirus infection. In: ECDC. Annual EpidemiologicalReport for 2021. Stockholm: ECDC; 2025. Stockholm, March 2025. Epidemiology For 2021, 29 EU/EEA countries reported data on hantavirus infections (Denmark did not report). Among these, 20countries reported 4 860 cases and nine countries reported zero cases. The vast majority of the cases reported(4 849; 99.8%) were classified as confirmed. Germany and Finland accounted for 63.7% of all reported cases(Table 1). The reported cases increased by 194% in 2021 compared to 2020. For 2021, five deaths were reportedby Austria (2), Slovakia (1), Slovenia (1) and Germany (1). The EU/EEA notification rate for 2021 was 1.1 cases per100 000 population. This is the highest notification rate within the 2017−2021 period, with previous years rangingfrom 0.4 to 0.8. The notification rate was highest in Slovenia (27.0 cases per 100 000 population), followed byFinland (25.8 cases per 100 000 population) (Table 1, Figure 1). Of the 2 804 cases with information available on importation status, 34 cases (1.2%) were travel-associated. Thirtyof these had a probable country of infection within the EU/EEA, three cases outside of the EU/EEA and for onecase the probable country of infection was unknown. PUUV was the most commonly identified pathogen, accounting for 2 247 (99.0%) of 2 270 cases with availableinformation on the causative agent. Hantaan virus was identified in six cases and DOBV in 17 cases. Discussion The year 2021 marked the highest rate of hantavirus infection cases recorded in TESSy for the five-year period2017−2021. In 2021, among all the countries reporting cases, the notification rate was highest (27.0 per 100 000population) in Slovenia, while in previous years, the notification rate was consistently highest for Finland. In 2021, the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County (bordering Slovenia) and the Lika-Senj County in Croatia reported alarge outbreak of hantavirus infections, caused by PUUV [5], with 246 confirmed and eight probable cases.However, only seven of these cases were reported to ECDC by Croatia for 2021. Hantavirus infections are known to follow b