Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 9 July 2025 to Question 64425 on Malaria: Research, whether the positive rt-PCR tests were validated against viral cultures of West Nile virus.

The samples were collected outside the cold chain, which means it was not possible to grow live virus from the mosquito blood meals or salivary glands. The validation is made by comparing the sequences with an international database of West Nile virus isolates and showed sequence identity with a cluster of other viruses from the WNV-1a branch.