French health authorities on Thursday reported the first human case of Shamonda virus after a patient died in early October.
France’s Health Ministry said the authorities reported a Shamonda virus infection in a patient with "severe immunodeficiency" who was receiving treatment for a serious illness at the Hospices Civils de Lyon in the country’s third-largest city.
They said the patient died in early October and that clinical, biological and epidemiological investigations are ongoing.
"The Shamonda virus had previously been considered non-transmissible to humans. The infection in this patient therefore constitutes the first documented and reported detection of the virus in a human," the ministry said in a statement.
It said no human cases had been documented earlier despite several decades of circulation in Africa and Asia.
"This is therefore an exceptional case involving a severely immunocompromised patient," the statement added.
It reaffirmed that no health risk to the general population has so far been identified.
The ministry said the virus was first identified in Europe this summer, including France, on cattle farms. The cattle are considered the main hosts among animal species that can be infected.
"At this stage of the investigation, the hypothesis is that the patient was infected through vector transmission, via the bite of a Culicoides midge in eastern France, a region where the virus was circulating among animals in spring and summer 2026," it added.
