24 enterovirus cases registered in Nizhny Novgorod over 2 days

Serous meningitis is on the rise in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod, the city located 400 km east of Moscow on the Volga River. Over the past two days, 24 new cases of the enterovirus infection have been registered here, the regional branch of the Federal Service for Control in the Sphere of Protection of Consumers' Rights and Well-Being of Humans (Rospotrebnadzor) said on Thursday. Among them, 13 children and four adults have been diagnosed with meningitis. The number of Nizhny Novgorod residents diagnosed with aseptic meningitis is climbing to 90 and they come from all the city’s districts, the medics say. Rospotrebnadzor is doing sanitary checks at educational institutions, children’s camps, public eating houses and food stores, the city’s water and wastewater plant, and beaches. “Food deliveries to nursery schools and children’s camps are under special surveillance of experts who are maintaining control over the thermal regime of food transportation, storage and cooking,” the city authorities said. Moreover, samples of tap water and of water from reservoirs and beaches are taken to laboratories more often to control virologic indices. “Over the past three weeks 308 samples of municipal water and 41 samples of water from 20 beaches have proved negative,” Rospotrebnadzor said. Epidemiologists expected seasonal rise of serous meningitis with its peak in August and September. But the disease cases were above the threshold already in June with 33 people, including 28 children who contracted it. As of now, 43 people have been discharged from hospitals.