First human case of infection of West Nile virus (Nile fever) in Sardinia. A 72-year-old man from Siamanna, in the province of Oristano, was hospitalized in the San Martino di Oristano hospital and then transferred to the infectious disease department of the Sassari hospital.
“The situation is under control – said Maria Valentina Marras, director of the Public Health Service of Local Health Authority 5 – “the conditions of the 72-year-old from Siamanna are mediocre and he is constantly monitored by the entire team of the Sassari hospital ward” .
The elderly man, with a high fever, was hospitalized in Oristano. The diagnosis was immediately that of Nile Fever, later confirmed by the tests carried out in the laboratory of the University Hospital of Cagliari.
In July, a group of mosquitoes captured by a trap in Torregrande and two crows, shot down by a hunter in the same spot in the territory of Solarussa, tested positive for Nile fever.
Last year there were eight cases of human contagion in West Nile in the Oristano area, four of which were people who later died. The virus, transmissible from infected birds to humans or other animals through mosquito bites, gives rise to asymptomatic forms in 80% of cases, causes flu-like symptoms in 20% (fever, headache, nausea and vomiting) and in less than 1% causes encephalitis or meningoencephalitis.
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