A recent publication in Eurosurveillance describes the detection of Usutu RNA in six birds in Greater London. Although the presence of neutralising antibodies in birds had been shown before, this is the first time that the virus has been detected in birds in the United Kingdom. The recently documented infections are likely to be the result of autochthonous transmission via mosquitoes. The six infected birds (five blackbirds and one house sparrow) were sampled between 15 July and 26 August 2020.

On the 20th of November, the Dutch daily newspaper de Volkskrant published an article about the research conducted in the One Health PACT consortium.

In this article, Marion Koopmans, Sander Koenraadt and Maarten Hoek talk about climate change, vector competence and citizen science. You can read the full article (in Dutch) on the website.

Joyce van Bree (one of the One Health PACT, PhD candidates) has been awarded with the Rob Goldbach Virology MSc thesis prize 2020.
This prize is handed out every two years for the best master thesis delivered for examination at the Laboratory of Virology in Wageningen. Joyce fully deserves this prize based on an excellent thesis. She identified a number of antiviral mosquito proteins that bound to a highly-structured RNA molecule derived from the West Nile and ZIKA virus genome. This RNA structure is required for efficient transmission of these viruses by mosquitoes.