The West Nile Virus – also a threat to animal health : Expert interview about the spread of West Nile virus in Germany - part 2

The West Nile virus is a mosquito-transmitted zoonotic pathogen, which was first isolated in Africa in the 1930s. In recent decades, the virus has spread to many regions of the world. By now, it has also reached Germany. Since 2018 there have been the first confirmed cases of West Nile virus in Germany. In 2019 the first infections were confirmed in humans in Germany. In the first part of our interview series we spoke to Prof. Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit of the Bernhard-Nocht-Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, who answered important questions related to human infections. The second part is dedicated to the risk the West Nile virus poses to animals. Before the first human cases were reported there had been several confirmed cases in birds and horses. Dr. Ute Ziegler is a veterinarian specialised in virology at the Institute of Novel and Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute. As head of the national reference laboratory for West Nile virus she witnesses the spread of the virus in Germany mirrored in the increasing number of suspect cases that are send to her laboratory.