In 2020, cases of zoonoses in Europe sharply drop due to the pandemic
UFFICIO STAMPA
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Back In 2020, cases of zoonoses in Europe sharply drop due to the pandemic
ISS, December 14th 2021
The European Union One Health Zoonoses report by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), and coordinated by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità -ISS (Italian National Institute of Health), has been published.
In 2020 Europe, including Italy, recorded a sharp reduction in the number of zoonoses. The decrease, as stated in the recently published European Union One Health Zoonoses report by EFSA and ECDC and coordinated by the ISS, is mainly due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic which drastically reduced the request for health assistance for the treatment of zoonotic diseases during the pandemic, limiting it to the most severe cases, but also because of reduced travelling and events, the closing of restaurants, social distancing, and better sanitisation and hand washing.
The ISS had a leading role in writing the document, coordinating the activities of a team of over 60 experts committed in preparing the EUOHZ report, made public by the EFSA and ECDC for the first time in 2021, and entrusted to the Consortium ZOE (Zoonoses under a One health perspective in the EU). Apart from the ISS, which contributed with 25 experts, the Consortium ZOE is also supported by the Istituto Zooprofilattico dell’Abruzzo e Molise (IZSAM), lead of the Consortium, the Istituto Zooprofilattico delle Venezie, the Istituto Zooprofilattico della Lombardia ed Emila Romagna, and the Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire de l’alimentation, de l’environnement et du travail (Anses).
Using the data collected in 2020, the report draws the epidemiological framework of zoonoses in EU countries, through a One Health approach based on the analysis and interpretation of the data related to cases in humans, animals and food, of priority zoonoses (campylobacteriosis, salmonellosis, listeriosis, tuberculosis, brucellosis, trichinellosis, echinococcosis) and non-priority zoonoses (rabies, yersiniosis, Q fever, West Nile fever , tularaemia, toxoplasmosis). The report also dedicates a whole chapter to describing foodborne outbreaks, describing the causes, food involved and context in which they occur.
The most significant data in the EUOHZ 2020 report is the sharp reduction in the number of cases of diseases recorded in the EU for all zoonoses – except for trichinellosis – and the number of foodborne outbreaks, which went from over 5,000 in 2019 to 3,086 in 2020, with a halving of involved cases. Compared to 2019, the reduction in cases of disease was equal to over 20% for all zoonoses except for listeriosis (-14%), Shigatoxin-producing Escherichia coli (-18%), and yersiniosis (-13%), without considering the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU. According to the EUOHZ report, the decrease is mainly due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic which drastically reduced the request for health assistance for the treatment of zoonotic diseases during the pandemic, limiting it to the most severe cases, but also because of reduced travelling and events, the closing of restaurants, social distancing, and better sanitisation and hand washing. In Italy, the most detected zoonosis in 2020 was salmonellosis, with 2,626 cases (3,256 in 2019), followed by campylobacteriosis which affected 1,618 individuals (1,433 in 2019), and listeriorsis detected in 147 cases (202 in 2019). There were 70 foodborne outbreaks detected in Italy in 2020 (135 in 2019) and 550 cases involved (1,472 in 2019).
This year the report was published with two new and valuable resources realized by the Consortium ZOE, and in particular with the coordination of IZSAM, for the online dynamic consultation of data on foodborne outbreaks (dashboard) and the sharing of general and contextual information (story map) on foodborne outbreaks, also for the general public.
