TBE in the Netherlands

Until 2015, tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) was presumed not to be endemic in the Netherlands. Consequently, the number of diagnostic requests for detection of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) infection had been low. Between 2006 and 2015, the laboratory of the Netherlands Centre of Infectious Disease Control (Clb), 1 of the 2 laboratories that performed TBEV diagnostics in the Netherlands at the time, received an average of 20 (range 12–27) requests for TBE diagnostics per year. In the same period, TBE was diagnosed in 7 Dutch patients. All of these cases were considered to be travel-related. Indeed, 6 out of 7 patients reported that they had recently travelled to TBEV-endemic countries such as Austria (4), Germany (1), and Sweden (1).