France has confirmed the first known human case of Shamonda virus in a patient who died at a Lyon hospital earlier in October.

In a joint statement, the country’s health and agriculture ministries said that there was “no health risk to the general public identified at this time”. According to French authorities, the reported infection appeared to be “an exceptional case involving a severely immunocompromised patient” hospitalised for a serious medical condition.

This raises questions about the risks posed by a virus that ​has reached Europe this year decades after first being detected in Nigeria. We explain what the virus is, what we know about the French case, whether a vaccine exists for this virus, and how infections spill over from animals to humans.

What is the Shamonda virus?

The Shamonda virus is a vector-borne virus belonging to the genus Orthobunyavirus in the family Peribunyaviridae .…