Ross River virus disease in two Dutch travellers returning from Australia, February to April 2015

Abstract

We report two cases of Ross River virus (RRV) infection in Dutch travellers who visited Australia during February to April 2015. These cases coincided with the largest recorded outbreak of RRV disease in Australia since 1996. This report serves to create awareness among physicians to consider travel-related RRV disease in differential diagnosis of patients with fever, arthralgia and/or rash returning from the South Pacific area, and to promote awareness among professionals advising travellers to this region.

Development of a SYBR green I-based quantitative RT-PCR for Ross River virus: Application in vector competence studies and antiviral drug evaluation

“…Though major outbreaks has not been reported outside Australia, however there are imported cases of RRV infection in New Zealand, through travelers who had travelled to Australia or nearby islands (Lau et al, 2012). Recently cases of RRV infection were reported in Dutch and Japanese patient who returned from Australia (Tochitani et al, 2014;Reusken et al, 2015). However, autochthonous transmission was not recorded in these cases unlike recent outbreaks of other arboviruses like Chikungunya and Zika virus (Grandadam et al, 2011;Maria et al, 2016).…”