ECDC publish ninth external quality assessment scheme for typing of STEC

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has published its ninth external quality assessment (EQA-9) scheme for typing of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC).

Human STEC infection is a zoonotic disease. In 2018, it had an EU notification rate of 2.3 cases per 100,000 of the population, which represented an increase after a stable period from 2014 to 2017. The most commonly reported STEC O group was O157, compromising 34.5% of cases with known serogroup. The EQA-9 contains serotyping, detection of virulence genes and molecular typing-based cluster analysis.

Source: ECDC, 5 November 2020