Search

Whole genome sequencing data of 874 Escherichia coli isolates carrying bla NDM-5 from 13 European Union/European Economic Area countries between 2012 and June 2022 showed the predominance of sequence types ST167, ST405, ST410, ST361 and ST648, and an increasing frequency of detection. Nearly a third (30.6%) of these isolates were associated with infections and more than half (58.2%) were predicted to be multidrug-resistant. Further spread of E. coli carrying bla NDM-5 would leave limited treatment options for serious E. coli infections.

In the WHO European Region, COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions continued slowing influenza circulation in the 2021/22 season, with reduced characterisation data. A(H3) predominated and, in some countries, co-circulated with A(H1)pdm09 and B/Victoria viruses. No B/Yamagata virus detections were confirmed. Substantial proportions of characterised circulating virus subtypes or lineages differed antigenically from their respective northern hemisphere vaccine components. Appropriate levels of influenza virus characterisations should be maintained until the season end and in future seasons, when surveillance is adapted to integrate SARS-CoV-2. ECDC and WHO internal funds. Sí

American mink and ferret are highly susceptible to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2), but no information is available for other mustelid species. SARS‐CoV‐2 spreads very efficiently within mink farms once introduced, by direct and indirect contact, high within‐farm animal density increases the chance for transmission. Between‐farm spread is likely to occur once SARS‐CoV‐2 is introduced, short distance between SARS‐CoV‐2 positive farms is a risk factor. As of 29 January 2021, SARS‐CoV‐2 virus has been reported in 400 mink farms in eight countries in the European Union. In most cases, the likely introduction of SARS‐CoV‐2 infection into farms was infected humans. Human health can be at risk by mink‐related variant viruses, which can establish circulation in the community, but so far these have not shown to be more transmissible or causing more severe impact compared with other circulating SARS‐CoV‐2. Concerning animal health risk posed by SARS‐CoV‐2 infection the animal species that may be included in monitoring plans are American mink, ferrets, cats, raccoon dogs, white‐tailed deer and Rhinolophidae bats. All mink farms should be considered at risk of infection; therefore, the monitoring objective should be early detection. This includes passive monitoring (in place in the whole territory of all countries where animals susceptible to SARS‐CoV‐2 are bred) but also active monitoring by regular testing. First, frequent testing of farm personnel and all people in contact with the animals is recommended. Furthermore randomly selected animals (dead or sick animals should be included) should be tested using reverse transcriptase‐polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR), ideally at weekly intervals (i.e. design prevalence approximately 5% in each epidemiological unit, to be assessed case by case). Suspected animals (dead or with clinical signs and a minimum five animals) should be tested for confirmation of SARS‐CoV‐2 infection. Positive samples from each farm should be sequenced to monitor virus evolution and results publicly shared.

Masteroppgave(MSc) in Master of Science in Business, Economics - Handelshøyskolen BI, 2021 This thesis studies how buyer power affects input prices in intermediate goods markets. The aim is to investigate how a buyer can invest to increase buyer power, and we use Inderst and Wey (2007) as a baseline for our study. We further extend the model to allow for size-based investment downstream and use the framework to briefly touch on the topic of prohibiting price discrimination. Our paper discusses previous literature on buyer power and price formation and provides somewhat novel insight into buyer-side investment incentives, an area where extant research is relatively narrow. We use a downstream agent’s total number of operated stores as a measure of buyer power and vary how the agents can acquire additional stores. We find that large buyer discounts depend on whether or not investments introduce additional retail stores to the market. When agents only reallocate stores, large-buyer discounts are amplified through investment. On the contrary, introducing new stores raises input prices faced by all buyers, and smaller buyers may have a higher incentive to grow. Interestingly, when all buyers invest, it might reduce their individual profits. They may still choose to invest in order not to fall behind. Furthermore, we provide some evidence that forbidding price discrimination may be welfare-hindering and reduce investment incentives.

Global dissemination of ciprofloxacin-resistant Salmonella Kentucky has been observed over the past decades. In recent years, there have been reports of extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) producing S. Kentucky. Routine surveillance at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) detected cases with a ciprofloxacin-resistant S. Kentucky with the ESBL-gene blaCTX-M-14b. Ensuing research identified 78 cases in 2013-2018 in eight European countries. Compared to other S. Kentucky and non-typhoidal Salmonella infections, reported to the European Surveillance System, these cases were more likely to be elderly and to present urinary-tract infections. Bayesian time-scaled phylogeny on whole genome sequences of isolates from these cases and supplementary isolates from public sequence databases was used to infer the origin and spread of this clone. We dated the origin of the blaCTX-M-14b clone to approximately 2005 in Northern Africa, most likely in Egypt. The geographic origin predicted by the phylogenetic analysis is consistent with the patients' travel history. Next to multiple introductions of the clone to Europe from Egypt, our analysis suggests that in some parts of Europe the clone might have formed a stable population, from which further spread has occurred. Comparative genomics indicated that the blaCTX-M-14b gene is present on the bacterial chromosome, within the type VI secretion system region. The blaCTX-M-14b gene is integrated downstream of the hcp1 gene, on a 2854 bp plasmid fragment containing also ISEcp1. This is the first report of a chromosomally integrated CTX-M gene in Salmonella spp. in Europe, previous studies having identified similar genes only on plasmids.

Analysis of sequencing data for 143 blaNDM-1- and blaOXA-48-positive Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from 13 European national collections and the public domain resulted in the identification of 15 previously undetected multi-country transmission clusters. For 10 clusters, cases had prior travel/hospitalisation history in countries outside of the European Union including Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Russia, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey. These findings highlight the benefit of European whole genome sequencing-based surveillance and data sharing for control of antimicrobial resistance.

Analysis of sequencing data for 143 blaNDM-1- and blaOXA-48-positive Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from 13 European national collections and the public domain resulted in the identification of 15 previously undetected multi-country transmission clusters. For 10 clusters, cases had prior travel/hospitalisation history in countries outside of the European Union including Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Russia, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey. These findings highlight the benefit of European whole genome sequencing-based surveillance and data sharing for control of antimicrobial resistance.

Since April 2020, when the first SARS-CoV-2 infection was reported in the Netherlands in a mink and subsequently in a mink farm worker, it has been established that human-to-mink and mink-to-human transmission can occur [1]. Since then, infections in mink have been reported in Denmark, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United States [2]. On 5 November 2020, Denmark reported 214 human COVID-19 cases infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus variants related to mink, as well as infected mink at more than 200 mink farms. Most human and animal cases reported since June 2020 have been in the North Jutland Region. The SARS-CoV-2 variants detected in these cases were part of atleast five closely-related clusters; each cluster was characterised by a specific mink-related variant, identified in humans and animals from infected mink farms. Denmark has implemented robust response measures to control theoutbreaks in mink and decrease the spill-over between the human and the animal reservoir. One of the clusters (Cluster 5), which was reported as circulating in August and September 2020, is related to a variant with four genetic changes, three substitutions and one deletion, in the spike (S) protein. Since the S protein contains the receptor-binding domain, and is a major target for immune response, such mutations could, in theory, have implications for viral fitness (ability to infect humans and animals), transmissibility, and antigenicity. As a consequence, the evolution of viruses with increasing changes in functional domains of the S protein could affect treatment, certain diagnostic tests and virus antigenicity. It could also have an impact on the effectiveness ofdeveloped vaccine candidates, and possibly require them to be updated. Investigations and studies are ongoing toclarify the extent of these possible implications

The COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the 2019/20 WHO European Region influenza surveillance. Compared with previous 4-year averages, antigenic and genetic characterisations decreased by 17% (3,140 vs 2,601) and 24% (4,474 vs 3,403). Of subtyped influenza A viruses, 56% (26,477/47,357) were A(H1)pdm09, 44% (20,880/47,357) A(H3). Of characterised B viruses, 98% (4,585/4,679) were B/Victoria. Considerable numbers of viruses antigenically differed from northern hemisphere vaccine components. In 2020/21, maintaining influenza virological surveillance, while supporting SARS-CoV-2 surveillance is crucial.

In digital radio systems, a large number of finite impulse response filters are typically used. Due to their nature of operation, such filters require many multiplication operations, leading to great costs in terms of both chip area and power consumption. For cost reduction reasons, there is a strong business case for implementing these filters without general multipliers so as to reduce the area and power consumption of the overall system.This thesis explores a method of implementing finite impulse response halfband filters without general multipliers, by using a special filter structure and replacing multipliers with sequences of binary shifts and additions. The savings in terms of area and power consumption are estimated and compared to a conventional filter (with a common structure) implementation containing general multipliers, as well as the same conventional filter implemented without general multipliers by means of manipulating its coefficients such that they can be implemented with shifts and additions.The results show that while using the special filter structure with shifts and additions consumes less area and power than a conventional filter with general multipliers, employing simpler methods to obtain coefficients implementable with shifts and additions in a conventional filter structure produces smaller filters consuming less power. Moreover, the results of this thesis show that using methods allowing for multiplier-free filter implementations with conventional filter structures seems favorable, hence further investigation of such methods is recommended. Future studies could also focus on methods applicable to filters with support for dynamic coefficients. Digitala radiosystem innehåller ofta ett stort antal filter med ändliga impulssvar. På grund av hur sådana filter opererar krävs ett stort antal multiplikationer, vilka implementerade i hårdvara tenderar ockupera stor kiselyta och konsumera hög effekt. För att reducera kostnader finns det därför ett starkt incitament att implementera dessa filter utan generella multiplikatorer. Detta examensarbete utforskar en metod för att implementera digitala halvbandsfilter utan generella multiplicerare, genom att använda en speciell filterstruktur och ersätta multiplikationerna med sekvenser av binära skiftoperationer och additioner. Besparingarna i termer av effektförbrukning och kiselyta uppskattas och jämförs med ett konventionellt implementerat filter (med en vanlig struktur) som uppfyller samma specifikationer samt samma filter med koefficienter manipulerade så att de kan uttryckas som sekvenser av binära skiftoperationer och additioner. Resultaten visar att såväl kiselyta som effektförbrukning ter sig lägre för filtret implementerat med den speciella strukturen och utan generella multiplicerare än för det konventionella filtret innehållande generella multiplicerare. Dock visas också att ännu större besparingar uppnås genom att använda den konventionella filterstrukturen men med koefficienter ma-nipulerade så att dessa kan implementeras utan multiplicerare. Överlag ärslutsatsen att konventionella filterstrukturer i kombination med metoder för att göra dess koefficienter implementerbara utan multiplicerare verkar mer lovande och att ytterligare studier av sådana metoders förtjänster bör stud-eras. Framtida studier skulle även kunna ta i beaktande metoder som ärapplicerbara på filter med icke-konstanta koefficienter.