2022-2023 season overview

• Influenza activity, based on patients in sentinel primary care settings testing positive for influenza virus infection, first crossed the epidemic threshold of 10% set for the Region in week 45/2022.
• Overall, influenza A(H3) viruses have dominated across most surveillance systems.

Other news

•  RSV is another respiratory virus that causes acute disease, often severe, mainly amongst young infants and the elderly. High levels of RSV have been circulating across the Region since week 40/2022, with overall positivity amongst patients consulting in primary care with acute respiratory illness remaining at 16% in week 47/2022, as in week 46/2022. Of the 32 countries having tested sentinel primary care samples since week 40/2022, 23 (72%) have reported a percentage positivity at or above 5%. 
• The European I-MOVE network estimated influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) using a multi-center test-negative design among symptomatic patients presenting at primary care between weeks 40/2021 and 20/2022. Influenza VE against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 among ten study sites and among all ages was 75% (95% CI: 43–89) and 81% (95% CI: 45–93) among those aged 18–64 years. All-age VE against influenza A(H3N2) was 29% (95% CI: 12–55) and 26% (95% CI:-22–55) among those aged 15–64 years. Among the viruses sequenced, all 53 A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses belong to clade 6B.1A.5a.1 and all of the 410 A(H3N2) viruses belonged to the 3C.2a1b.2a.2 clade.

For information about the SARS-CoV-2 situation in the WHO European Region visit:

• WHO website: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
• ECDC website: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/novel-coronavirus-china

For the European Region, influenza virus positivity in sentinel primary care specimens increased from 13% in the previous week to 14% in week 47/2022. This is the third consecutive week above the epidemic threshold, which is set at 10%. This is an earlier start to the influenza epidemic than in the four previous seasons: ranging from week 47 (2019/20 season) to 49 (2021/22 season).

Mortality monitoring

For week 47/2022 overall pooled EuroMOMO estimates of all-cause mortality for the participating European countries show elevated but decreasing level of excess mortality. Data from 22 European countries or subnational regions were included in the week 47/2022 pooled analysis of all-cause mortality.

The full EuroMOMO report can be found here: https://www.euromomo.eu/

Please refer to the EuroMOMO website for a cautionary note relating to interpretation of these data.