Via ECDC: Joint ECDC-WHO Regional Office for Europe Weekly Hepatitis of Unknown Origin in Children Surveillance Bulletin. The summary:
This report provides an overview of the cases of hepatitis of unknown origin in children aged 16 years and below reported to ECDC and the WHO Regional Office for Europe through The European Surveillance System (TESSy) hosted at ECDC.As of 16 June 2022, 449 cases of acute hepatitis of unknown aetiology have been reported by 20 countries: (Austria (three), Belgium (14), Bulgaria (one), Cyprus (two), Denmark (seven), France (seven), Greece (nine), Ireland (14), Israel (five), Italy (33), Latvia (one), the Netherlands (15), Norway (five), Poland (eight), Portugal (15), Republic of Moldova (one), Serbia (one), Spain (37), Sweden (nine), and the United Kingdom (262)).Since the last surveillance bulletin, which used data as of 17 June 2022, 48 new cases have been reported from eight countries (Austria (one), Greece (three), Ireland (one), Italy (two), the Netherlands (one), Spain (one), Sweden (one), and the United Kingdom (38)). One case (Sweden) previously classified as probable or epi-linked was subsequently discarded.The epicurve shows cases by date of onset when available (276 cases), and date of hospitalisation (155 cases), or date used for statistics when the former two are not available (18 cases). The number of cases reported increased sharply starting in week 12 and remained stable between 26 and 39 cases per week up to and including week 18. As severe hepatitis can take some time to develop following the initial symptoms, and since investigations are required to rule out known causes, there is an expected reporting delay. The recent decrease in cases is therefore challenging to interpret.The majority (76.6%) of cases are five years old or younger.Of the 449 probable cases, 276 have information available on clinical outcome. Of these, 201 have recovered, while 74 remain under medical care.Of 279 cases with available information, 87 (31.2%) required admission to an intensive care unit. Of the 227 cases for which this information is available, 19 (8.4%) have received a liver transplant. There has been one death associated with the disease.Overall, 313 cases were tested for adenovirus by any specimen type and had a valid positive or negative result. Of these, 164 (52.4%) tested positive. The positivity rate was the highest in whole blood specimens (53.9%). Typing data are only available for four cases: type 40 (n = 1), type 41 (n = 2), and type other (n = 1).Of the 292 cases PCR tested for SARS-CoV-2, 31 (10.6%) were positive. Serology results for SARS-CoV-2 are only available for 52 cases, of which 33 (63.5%) resulted positive. Of the 99 cases with data on COVID-19 vaccination, 85 (85.9%) were unvaccinated.
