Public Health England
Human Animal Infections and Risk Surveillance (HAIRS) group
Qualitative assessment of the risk that tick-borne encephalitis presents to the UK population
PHE publications, gateway number: GW-762, published September 26, 2019
Public Health England (PHE) has recently prepared and published a document on behalf of the joint Human Animal Infections and Risk (HAIRS) group. Until 2019, TBE virus was considered as not occurring in the UK. Only travel-related TBE cases are occasionally diagnosed in the UK – five confirmed cases were reported between 2012 and 2016. New findings have recently indicated that ticks infected with TBE virus are present in defined areas of Thetford Forest in East England – Thetford Forest is the largest lowland pine forest in Britain and is located in a region straddling the north of Suffolk and the south of Norfolk.
During 2018, about 1,300 deer serum samples from England and Scotland were tested by TBE virus IgG ELISA and looping ill virus (LIV) hemagglutination inhibition assay. Blood-fed ticks from deer in areas with seropositive deer were tested by RT-PCR using LIV/TBE virus RNA assay, and a secondary LIV specific assay. Five ticks from the Thetford Forest area were PCR positive and a full-length genome of TBE virus was obtained by sequencing from one of these. Subsequent surveys of questing ticks were conducted in the Thetford area and two pools of ticks were positive.
The document discusses routes of introduction of TBE virus into the UK and the risk to acquire TBE.