Livestock virus Shamonda is found in a human for the first time in a French patient who later died

A man in his 60s from the Lyon area, treated at Hospices Civils de Lyon for a serious illness that left him severely immunocompromised, appears to be the first human ever recorded as having contracted the livestock virus Shamonda. He died in early October after developing cerebral complications. Officials believe he picked up the virus through the bite of an infected midge in eastern France. Investigators have yet to establish whether the infection caused his death or only contributed to it.

French health chiefs said the virus was 'considered incapable of being transmitted to humans'.

It has already been found in farm animals in Jersey, a British Crown Dependency.

No commercial vaccine exists, and traces have been found in the brains of dead horses.