The World Health Organization's office in Russia announced that the organization is monitoring the spread of ticks in the European continent, following the discovery of cases of tick-borne bourbon virus in the United States.
The organization noted that the Bourbon virus has so far only been detected in the United States, and there is currently no evidence that it poses a direct threat to public health in other countries.
A source at the WHO office in Russia told the Russian news agency Novosti: "The WHO and its partner epidemiological surveillance networks, including national health authorities and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, continue to monitor tick-borne pathogens in the European Region and follow up on any possible changes in the patterns of tick species spread that may affect the epidemiological situation in the future."
It is worth noting that Fox News reported on August 1st the first case of Bourbon virus infection in New York State, a rare virus for which there is no approved vaccine yet. Symptoms of infection include fever, weakness, headache, body aches, nausea, vomiting, and skin rash. Medical teams are facing difficulty in diagnosing the infection due to the lack of specific laboratory tests for it.
For his part, the virologist and senior researcher at the Russian Gamaleya Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology told Novosti earlier that about 6 to 7 cases of infection with the virus had been recorded, two of which were fatal, but he pointed out that the discovery of antibodies to the virus in the blood of some people may mean that the virus is more widespread than the officially recorded numbers indicate.
