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.
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