ECDC Issues Seasonal Advisory on Vibrio Risk in Warming European Waters

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control classified the months ahead as a high-risk season for Vibrio infections in June 2026. Euronews reported that the agency cited warming coastal waters as a key factor driving bacterial growth. Vibrio vulnificus lives in warm, brackish waters and reaches humans through open wounds or raw shellfish.

In vulnerable people it can cause sepsis and tissue necrosis within hours. The CDC states that one in five patients with a severe infection dies within a few days. Since 1988 the United States has recorded more than 2,600 Vibrio vulnificus infections and over 700 deaths.

Florida reported 82 cases and 19 deaths in 2024 after Hurricane Helene, with total Vibrio deaths in the state reaching 89 that year. By August 2025 Florida recorded 13 cases and 4 deaths. Louisiana reported 17 hospitalized cases and 4 deaths by the same month, a 400 percent increase in fatalities compared with previous years.

Eight people died from the bacterium in the United States in the first months of 2025. A 77-year-old man died in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, on 21 July 2025 after a scratch on his leg while working with a boat trailer.

Streptococcus pyogenes spreads through respiratory droplets or skin wounds and can cause streptococcal toxic shock syndrome with a mortality rate of around 30 percent. Japan recorded 941 cases of the syndrome in 2023 and 977 infections with 77 deaths by mid-2024, far above the annual range of 100 to 200 cases seen between 1992 and 2022.

Europe recorded an average of 126 Vibrio infections per year from 2014 to 2017.

The total reached 445 in 2018, mainly in Baltic countries. Galicia, Spain, recorded outbreaks of 64 cases in 1999, 80 in 2004 and nearly 100 in 2012, all linked to local shellfish. The European Environment Agency states that sea surface temperatures in Europe have risen between four and seven times faster than the global ocean average.