Health will activate "all public tools" to track each case of shamonda virus

The Minister of Health, Mónica García, assured this Friday that the ministry will put in place "all the tools and public servers" to monitor and track each of the cases of shamonda virus, already detected in cattle from Córdoba, Toledo, Cantabria, Madrid, Ávila and Girona.

Last Thursday, the world's first case of human infection with this pathogen was confirmed in France, according to the latest update report on the situation of this virus, in a man "with severe immunosuppression" who ended up dying, although until now it was not considered a disease transmissible to people.

The Minister of Health explained to the media, before a meeting of the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System, that they are in contact with the rest of the Government ministries and with their counterparts in the European Union. Likewise, he detailed that "exhaustive epidemiological surveillance" is being carried out from the One Health perspective, which integrates knowledge in the areas of human, animal and environmental health.

García has asserted that the person who died in France "was immunosuppressed" and that the virus affects "cattle." "We will continue to report and we will continue to do what we have always done, what we did with the hantavirus and what we have done with all emerging diseases and all emerging infections," he assured.

In livestock farming, the shamonda virus is considered an emerging disease not subject to mandatory notification, which affects cattle after the bite of vector mosquitoes and which, although it does not cause the death of the animal, does impact milk production while presenting symptoms, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

The first detection in cattle in Spain was last September and, subsequently, the ministry confirmed the detection of the shamonda virus type 1 in farms in the provinces of Córdoba, Toledo, Ávila and Madrid. Recently, it has also been detected in Girona, where three dairy cattle farms were identified last Tuesday, the 20th.