PORDENONE – It was expected and promptly occurred: the Nile virus seems to have made its appearance in Friuli Venezia Giulia e specifically in the Destra Tagliamento, even if to have the confirmation it will be necessary to wait for the checks that will be carried out tomorrow. The West Nile virus has been identified, for now only with a first screening, in a donor’s blood bag, a man residing in the province of Pordenone, who did not show any symptoms. The detection of the virus was precisely the fact that in all the immunotransfusion centers in the region the donor tests had been taken in recent days: a procedure necessary to be able to donate without problems and above all to protect the recipients. On the other hand, the suspension from donations of those who have been on holiday in the areas at risk, as it happened in the past: the choice of the test makes it possible not to limit donations at a time when there is already a shortage of blood, but to guarantee safety in any case.
In past years, donors who had traveled to endemic areas were suspended from donations for a period. This year, however, even in the face of the need for blood, the test route was preferred. Indeed, the checks made it possible to identify a case that would probably not have come to light in any other way, considering that the subject does not manifest any symptoms, as happens frequently: 20 percent of the infected are in fact completely asymptomatic, while over 50 experiences symptoms such as fever. The important events instead concern 20 percent of the infected. Finally, serious complications of a neurological nature, especially encephalitis and meningitis, arise in less than 1 percent of infected people and affect the elderly more frequently. The appearance of the West Nile virus on the territory was moreover expected, as had predicted the infectious disease specialist of the hospital Santa Maria degli Angeli Massimo Crapis, who had anticipated that it was practically impossible that cases did not occur in the province of Pordenone and in general in the entire region. Infected ones have in fact been found in the “cages” placed to capture and identify any carrier mosquitoes, and experience confirms that usually after twenty days, at most one month from their identification, the first cases ascertained on people occur. The first positive screening now seems to confirm that prediction and, moreover, the Pordenone area is an area in which there have already been cases and hospitalizations in the past.