Europe has reported its first cases of the Oropouche virus, just days after the illness claimed two lives in Brazil, raising alarm over its swift spread across South America.
The virus, which can be transmitted from sloths to humans by insects, has raised expert concerns about a potential “unstoppable” outbreak. The Lancet medical journal revealed that two individuals who had been to Cuba showed symptoms of Oropouche upon their return to Italy.
A 26-year-old woman developed a fever and diarrhea after travelling from Cuba’s Ciego de Avila province to Verona on May 26.Another traveller, understood to be a 45-year-old man, showed signs of the virus after visiting Havana and Santiago de Cuba, subsequently seeking healthcare in Fori, northern Italy, on June 7.
“We should definitely be worried,” Imperial College London’s Immunology Professor Dr Danny Altmann told The Telegraph. “Things are changing and may become unstoppable.”
The experts underlined the risk of “significant human movement” facilitating wider propagation of the virus, highlighting the surge of summer travel between Cuba and Europe as an added concern. Increasing global temperatures could exacerbate human exposure to viruses like Oropouche, scientists caution.
The Department of Tropical Infectious Diseases and Microbiology of the Scientific Research Hospital Sacred Heart Don Calabria, north of Verona, carried out tests which showed the presence of Oropouche in the patients’ blood after they returned from Cuba to Italy. Both travelers made a full recovery, the Telegraph reported.
Managing emerging pathogens at a Verona hospital, Dr Concetta Castilletti remarked: “Arboviruses such as Oropouche fever, Dengue, Zika, or Chikungunya, constitute one of the public health emergencies we must get used to living alongside.”
“Climate change and the increase in the movement of human populations risk making viruses [that were] once confined to the tropical belt endemic even in our latitudes,” she highlighted.
It marks the first time an Oropouche infection has been diagnosed outside of Latin America. The virus, transmitted by infected midges and mosquitoes from the blood of sloths to humans, has previously been associated with stillbirths and birth defects, sparking concerns of a recurrence of the Zika virus outbreak that began in 2015.
Oropouche is part of the arbovirus family, which includes the Zika virus and Dengue, and is typically found in the Amazon rainforest, the Telegraph reports. The majority of cases have been reported in Brazil, but the virus has also been detected in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru.
Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health first reported Oropouche cases on May 27. Since then, a total of 74 cases have been confirmed, primarily in the provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Songo La Maya.
The Lancet has warned that the actual number of infections could be significantly higher than reported, especially as Ciego de Avila province, where one of the travelers had been, was not among the Cuban areas where the World Health Organisation reported the Oropouche virus at the time of diagnosis.
Brazil has seen the world’s first fatalities linked to the virus following the deaths of two young women.
The victims, just 21 and 24 years old, endured extreme abdominal pain, bleeding and hypotension, and succumbed on July 25. Described as issuing symptoms akin to dengue fever, Oropouche infection signs include headaches, fevers, muscular pains, joint stiffness, nausea, vomiting, chills, or a heightened sensitivity to light.
