Overview
- Regen district authorities confirmed a lab-verified BoDV-1 infection in a 79-year-old who is being treated in intensive care.
- Investigators have not determined how the patient was exposed, with contact with field shrews or their excretions considered plausible.
- Officials stress there is no person-to-person spread, and they advise avoiding live or dead shrews and using gloves and masks when cleaning sheds or barns.
- BoDV-1 is a shrew-borne virus that can reach humans through bites or by inhaling dust contaminated with urine, feces, or saliva, and it often causes fatal brain inflammation.
- Cases remain few but concentrated in Bavaria, where this year’s German total has reached five, including a recent death in Augsburg.