For days now in Europe it has been seen how a pathogen began to spread to different countries, although quietly, from the beginning it was believed to be an exclusively veterinary problem. But everything changed when in France they announced the first recorded infection in a human by the Chamonda virus, which ended in death.
First case It was a patient who was admitted seriously ill and eventually died in a hospital in Lyon without doing much for his life. And while ECDC keeps the investigation open to determine whether the virus directly caused or contributed to the death, this clinical milestone forces us to change our thinking about a virus we thought couldn’t infect us.
Jump for people. According to a joint statement issued this Thursday by the French Ministry of Agriculture and Health, the main hypothesis regarding the transmission point of a midge bite in the genus. Culicoides. This small bloodsucking insect was very active in eastern France during the spring and summer of this year, a period in which the virus circulated intensively in animals, with sporadic cases detected in small ruminants and horses.
But at the moment the ECDC insists that it is still unknown which specific species it is Culicoides These human cases are precisely responsible for infection, but European authorities are already asking to activate emergency preparedness plans to control these vectors.
A silent expansion. To understand how we got to this first human case, we must look back to the past few months, as the animal outbreak of 2026 rolls around. A priori, the Chamonda virus was detected for the first time in French dairy cattle last June, and researchers from the INRAE and the National Veterinary School of Toulouse were able to identify it using nanopore metagenomics technology, discovering that its genetic segments have high mutation rates or genetic reassortment with historical control strains.
in spain We are not spared from the wave of infection in the livestock sector, since the Central Veterinary Laboratory in Aljet has confirmed the presence of two strains of the virus in different cattle farms in the country. Moreover, at the beginning of October the Ministry of Agriculture indicated Córdoba, Toledo, Ávila or Madrid as vulnerable areas.
But curiously, the rise of human cases in France has out-dated the official position in our country. To date, the official MAPA disease page continues to state that “there is no evidence that Shamanda virus is a zoonosis”, meaning that it can be transmitted to humans.
The most alarming symptom Undoubtedly, it is the neurological impairment that causes it. The German institute here detected high concentrations of the virus in the brains of FLI-infected horses, directly linking the pathogen to the clinical disorder. It may pose a threat to humans, although much research has yet to be done to determine exactly how worrisome this threat is.
Picture | Daniel Daniel
In Xataka | We used to believe that our biggest problem as a species was superbugs. What is really dangerous is the “superfungi”.
