10 West Nile patients in ICU in Padua

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 22 - Ten West Nile Fever patients have been moved to the ICU in a Padua hospital amid a concerning rise in the mosquito-borne disease in Veneto, medical sources said Monday.
    There are now 15 people with the fever in the Padua hospital in all.
    The hospital said some of those in the ICU were relatively young, at around 50-60 years of age.
    "The rest are elderly, hard hot by this virus, which seems particularly aggressive this year", said the director-general of the Azienda Ospedale Università Padova, Giuseppe Dal Ben.
    Meanwhile a third case was reported in Tuscany, a 16-year-old boy.
    A 74-year-old woman died of West Nile Fever in Reggio Emilia overnight, the local health authority said Wednesday.
    The woman had been severely immuno-depressed.
    She had been in hospital since August 7.
    She died late Tuesday night from West Nile associated meningoencephalitis and a concomitant infection from Covid-19.
    It was the second death from the fever in Emilia-Romagna after the recent death of an 88-year-old man in Ferrara.
    Another man died of West Nile Fever near Brescia on Thursday. He was from Cigole, south of Brescia.
    He had been hospitalised recently.
    He was one of the two more serious patients of four West Nile cases in and around the Lombardy city.
    His death brought to 11 Italy's death toll from the virus since the start of June.
    West Nile virus cases have risen 53% in Italy in the last seven days, the Higher Health Institute (ISS) said Thursday.
    The number of cases has risen from 94 to 144, from the beginning of June to Tuesday August 9, the ISS said.
    Four people have now died of the virus in the last week, taking the overall death toll up to 11, all in northern Italy.
    There have been six deaths in Veneto, two in Piedmont, two in Lombardy and one in Emilia-Romagna.
    West Nile virus (WNV) is a single-stranded RNA virus that causes West Nile fever. It is a member of the family Flaviviridae, from the genus Flavivirus, which also contains the Zika virus, dengue virus, and yellow fever virus.
    The virus is primarily transmitted by mosquitoes, mostly species of Culex.
    The primary hosts of WNV are birds, so that the virus remains within a "bird-mosquito-bird" transmission cycle. The virus is genetically related to the Japanese encephalitis family of viruses. (ANSA).