Abstract
What is already known about this topic? Brucellosis is one of the world’s most overlooked zoonotic diseases, and humans can easily acquire brucellosis from animals and their products. Reemerging brucellosis outbreaks are probably attributable to sociocultural factors and compounded by the lack of adequate control measures in sheep and goat rearing systems. What is added by this report? This is the first identified outbreak caused by Brucella melitensisbv.3 in Jingyang County, Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province. A total of 13 seropositve cases (7 acute patients and 6 asymptomatic persons) were identified from March to May, 2020, and the investigation indicated that sheep-to-canine-to-human was the likely transmission route. What are the implications for public health practice? Effective control of sheep brucellosis will significantly reduce the risk of human brucellosis. Priority should be given to building cooperation between all stakeholders, maintaining epidemiological surveillance to detect human brucellosis at medical centers, and making case reporting mandatory for both veterinary and public health services.
Highlights
Confirmed cases were defined as suspected cases with an antibody titer of ≥1∶100 (++) in serum agglutination test (SAT) or positive Brucella isolate according to the guidelines for the Diagnosis of Human Brucellosis (WS 269–2019)
All the individuals who visited Patient 1’s family in her village were investigated, and the results showed that the visits were associated with disease onset
The results of epidemiological investigation and comprehensive analysis indicated that the brucellosis outbreak in Patient 1’s family and the eight relatives was caused by exposure to their infected dogs that were likely exposed due to consuming miscarried lambs buried in Patient 10’s family orchard
Summary
Brucellosis Outbreak Caused by Brucella melitensis — Jingyang County, Shaanxi Province, China, March–May, 2020. This is the first identified outbreak caused by Brucella melitensis bv. in Jingyang County, Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province. Priority should be given to building cooperation between all stakeholders, maintaining epidemiological surveillance to detect human brucellosis at medical centers, and making case reporting mandatory for both veterinary and public health services. From April 29 to May 1, 2020, a brucellosis outbreak was reported in a village in Jingyang County, and as of May 7, 7 symptomatic cases and 6 asymptomatic cases were detected and reported. MLVA-16 (multiple-locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis) was performed for epidemiological tracing [3]
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