Oropouche virus, discovery of new transmission route

The Department of Infectious Diseases, Tropical, and Microbiology of IRCCS Sacred Heart Don Calabria of Negrar di Valpolicella (Verona Province) was the first to isolate the Oropouche virus in the semen of an Italian national who had recently returned from Cuba. The patient was diagnosed with infection more than two weeks before the isolation of the virus. The findings of the research team were published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, which is a review of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US federal agency for disease prevention and control. Federico Giovanni Gobbi, one of the authors of the publication, has specified that, although cases of direct transmission between humans have not yet been described and the level of risk is very low for Italy, where five cases were recorded, the possibility of human-to-human transmission remains to be confirmed by further studies, given the potential impact of climate change and increasing human mobility.