‘Possibility’ acute cases of hepatitis syndrome will appear
Health experts are not ruling out the possibility of acute cases of a hepatitis syndrome identified in Europe, the UK and the US afflicting children in Greece.
By Tuesday afternoon, there were so far no reports of children with hepatitis having this particular syndrome, which appears to be related to a specific type of adenovirus, although experts are unable to answer whether it is ultimately responsible for the 190 cases recorded abroad.
“We have not had an incident in our country that meets the criteria to be associated with the outbreak of acute hepatitis of unknown aetiology in children.
Still,” said Dimitris Paraskevis, associate professor of epidemiology and preventive medicine at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (EKPA) and vice president of the National Public Health Organization (EODY).
Gkikas Magiorkinis, assistant professor of health epidemiology at EKPA, told ERT1 on Tuesday that in the UK, where the majority of cases have been observed, 77% of children with acute hepatitis of unknown aetiology had isolated adenovirus 41.
“Theoretically, we estimate that if there are cases in Greece, these will be in the range of 10 to 20 – in the worst case,” he said.
