French authorities announced Thursday the first known human infection by Shamonda, a cattle virus, in a severely immunocompromised patient who died in early October.
Hospices Civils de Lyon had treated the patient for another serious illness, the French Agriculture Ministry said. The ministry said brain complications before death were very probably linked to the infection. The statement does not give the patient’s age, sex or onset date, or say how testing found the virus.
Investigators suspect a midge of the Culicoides genus bit the patient in eastern France, where animals carried the virus through spring and summer, the ministry said. Authorities see no danger to the wider public so far. France has alerted the WHO and the ECDC, the European Union’s disease control agency, and investigations continue.
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Shamonda, an orthobunyavirus carried by midges, mainly infects cattle. The earliest detection was recorded in Nigeria in the mid-1960s, and the virus has since appeared in cattle across parts of Africa and in Japan. Until this case, the ministry said, no human infection had surfaced in decades of circulation across Africa and Asia, and authorities had judged the virus unable to spread to people.
The virus reached Europe this summer. Germany and Switzerland detected a Shamonda-like virus in cattle in early August, according to Austria’s AGES agency, which said at the time it presumed humans were not susceptible, pending confirmation.
In France, about ten farms in Savoie, Haute-Savoie, Ain, Jura and Doubs had cattle with fever, diarrhea and falling milk yields by mid-August, according to a Lyon Capitale report. The outlet also said it isn’t transmissible to humans.
