WP11 Meeting – Vector-Borne Diseases: West Nile Virus
On Friday September 11, the Durable community came together and focused on West Nile Virus. The main message was that vector-borne diseases are expanding geographically across Europe with a high West Nile virus activity in Italy and particularly Greece, together with increasing circulation in Northern Europe.
Marion Koopmans – Erasmus MC highlighted the northward expansion of West Nile virus and the increasing relevance of vector-borne diseases across Europe. She stressed that we should move beyond describing surveillance results and also start to focus on actionable countermeasures, including vector control and treatment.
Christina Merakou presented ongoing substantial West Nile activity in Italy, with West Nile expanding beyond its traditional northern distribution into central and southern regions. She emphasized the importance of combining clinical alerts, vector surveillance and control, sequencing, blood-safety measures and human behaviour to understand and respond to transmission.
Georgios Meletis reported exceptionally high West Nile activity in Greece in 2026, affecting both humans and mosquitoes, with Attica as a major outbreak area. The findings underline the importance of integrating human case surveillance with mosquito testing, sequencing and targeted public-health interventions.
Frederic Bartumeus Ferre and María I. González focused in their presentation on measuring actual human–mosquito contact with the Mosquito Alert App by citizens, rather than relying only on mosquito abundance. Citizen-reported mosquito bites, combined with vector, environmental and epidemiological data, could help identify where and when human exposure occurs and improve targeted interventions.
The group emphasized that transmission is shaped by a complex interaction of vectors, hosts, climate, ecosystems and human behaviour, making outbreaks difficult to predict from mosquito abundance alone. The priority is therefore to develop more integrated surveillance and use it to determine where, when and for whom interventions will be most effective.
