Deadly tickborne virus that’s spreading in Europe ‘likely to reach UK’

Climate change is causing infectious ticks to move north in Europe, expert warns

A virus with a fatality rate of 30 per cent that is spreading in Europe will almostly certainly reach the UK, an expert has warned.

Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a disease caused by a tickborne virus, categorised as one of the nine “priority diseases” deemed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to “pose the greatest public health risk due to their epidemic potential”.

The virus causes sudden symptoms of fever, dizziness, pain in the head, neck, back and eyes, and sensivity to light, and has a fatality rate of approximately 30 per cent, with between one to four in 10 cases proving deadly across various outbreaks, according to the WHO.

The disease is estimated by the EU to kill around 500 people each year and is endemic in Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and Asian countries south of the geographical limit of the principal tick vector, which stretches as far north as Mongolia, the UN health agency states.

In April, however, Ali Mirazimi – a virologist at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute – told Modern Diplomacy that ticks carrying the virus were “moving up through Europe due to climate change, with longer and drier summers”.

With ticks capable of travelling large distances while being carried by migratory birds, nine cases have now been recorded in Spain since its first locally acquired infection in 2013, while evidence of the virus has been found in ticks in Italy.

As work in Europe continues to develop an effective vaccine, the head of Cambridge University’s veterinary science department warned this week that it was now “a case of when and not if” the disease will reach the UK.

Speaking after being called to give evidence to parliament’s science, innovation and technology committee about the threat of emerging diseases, Professor James Wood told the Daily Mirror: “There’s a high level of uncertainty whether it’s going to be five years, or 15, or 25 by the time it reaches the UK.

Tick bites are the most common method of infection (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

“That’s the case for these sorts of things, like CCHF, which have not been particularly well studied. Certainly when you compare them to diseases like Lyme disease or other tick infections that we know about, there’s a lot of uncertainty around it.

“It’s very difficult to add any kind of precision to that and it would be a mistake to, frankly. So none of us are trying to say, you know that ‘we’re all going to die’ or ‘we’re all doomed’.

“It’s just about being aware that because of the way the world is changing, we’ve got to be much more aware of these sorts of infections in the way that we haven’t been in the past.”

Research is ongoing into the potential timescale within which the virus could arrive in the UK, he told the paper, which claimed that native birds such as house sparrows and blue jays, which have been known to carry ticks, pose some concern to experts.

While the virus is capable of spreading between humans via the excretions, blood and bodily fluids of an infected person or animal, it is more commonly contracted from tick bites.

“It can spread but you should expect it more really in hospital-type settings where people don’t realise what’s going on and haven’t taken appropriate safety measures, like PPE, what we are so used to seeing hospital workers wear anyway,” said Prof Wood.

Also highlighting farmers as particularly vulnerable to infection, Prof Wood advised people should try to keep ticks at bay by wearing long trousers and checking their legs after leaving areas of dense grass and bracken.