Andalucia has called for calm after the first-ever human case of Shamonda virus resulted in a death in France.

Regional agriculture minister Ramon Fernandez-Pacheco said two livestock outbreaks had been identified in Andalucia, one in Cordoba and another in Cadiz, but insisted there was no cause for alarm.

‘The situation is completely normal and nothing indicates that we should be worried,’ he told reporters.

He described the French infection as an isolated case still under investigation and said technical teams were continuing to assess the situation.

According to the minister, both Andalucian livestock outbreaks had subsided.

The French patient, who had a severely weakened immune system, was receiving treatment for a serious illness at a hospital in Lyon and died in early October.

French authorities said neurological complications observed before the patient’s death were very probably linked to the infection.

Their leading hypothesis is that the patient contracted the virus through the bite of an infected midge in eastern France, where it had been circulating among animals.

Officials described the infection as exceptional and said no health risk to the general population had been identified on the evidence available.

Shamonda is an orthobunyavirus transmitted to animals by biting midges of the Culicoides genus.

First detected in Nigeria in the mid-1960s, it has been reported sporadically in parts of Africa and Japan. It was identified in European cattle herds for the first time this summer.

France has notified the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control while clinical, laboratory and epidemiological investigations continue.

Read more Andalucia news at the Spanish Eye.