Heraklion: 75-year-old in ICU with West Nile virus

A 75-year-old man with underlying health conditions is on a ventilator in the Intensive Care Unit of the Venizeleio Hospital in Heraklion, following a confirmed West Nile virus infection. The patient is a resident of Attica and was in Ierapetra, where he developed a fever and went to the city’s hospital. From there he was referred to the Agios Nikolaos Hospital, where he was admitted to the ICU. Because the unit was due to close for scheduled disinfection, the patient was transferred on Wednesday 19 August 2026 to the Venizeleio, where he has remained since. This is the first confirmed case of the virus diagnosed at a hospital in Crete.

Identification was carried out at the Laboratory of Clinical Virology of the University of Crete Medical School, which serves as the National Public Health Organisation’s reference laboratory for the Region of Crete. The Head of the Region of Crete’s Public Health Directorate, Antonis Papadakis, stressed that the case being identified on the island does not mean it is recorded epidemiologically as a case from Crete, since the infection is attributed to Attica. Professor of Clinical Virology Georgios Sourvinos takes the same view, linking the case epidemiologically to Attica rather than to transmission on the island. According to the same reports, around 30 samples from patients in Crete with compatible symptoms have been examined at the laboratory, with no other positive result.

For the island, this distinction has practical significance. Crete is not included on the National Public Health Organisation’s map of affected areas and high-risk areas, and one patient being hospitalised here does not by itself change this picture, since the virus is transmitted to humans through mosquitoes and not from person to person. The incident does, however, highlight a second reality, that of the shortage of intensive care beds in the region: the patient had to be moved from Agios Nikolaos to Heraklion for purely organisational, not clinical, reasons. The Venizeleio has been in the spotlight again recently, such as when a 20-year-old student was discharged from the ICU after a lengthy hospital stay.

At a nationwide level, and as the figures are conveyed through the reports rather than the National Public Health Organisation’s own report, 157 domestic cases had been recorded as of 19 August 2026, of which 116 with central nervous system involvement, along with 13 deaths. These figures concern the whole country, not Crete. No additional measure specifically for the island has been announced, while the stance described by health authorities can be summed up as vigilance without alarm. What happens next depends on two things: the progress of the 75-year-old’s health, on which no further update has been given, and whether a positive sample with Crete as the place of infection will emerge, which has not happened so far.