West Nile Virus in Serbia: 6 Ways to Avoid Mosquito Bites

Can a single mosquito bite land you in the hospital? For two Belgrade residents this week, that is exactly what happened. The Institute of Public Health of Serbia “Dr Milan Jovanovic Batut” announced on August 6, 2026 that laboratory tests had confirmed, a day earlier, the first two human cases of West Nile virus fever in the 2026 surveillance season.

Both patients are from the city of Belgrade and are 75 and 82 years old. They were hospitalized at the Clinic for Infectious and Tropical Diseases in Belgrade after developing the neuroinvasive form of the disease, the one that affects the nervous system. Confirmation came from the National Reference Laboratory for Arboviruses and Hemorrhagic Fevers at the Institute of Virology, Vaccines and Sera “Torlak”, and the Belgrade City Institute of Public Health also took part in reporting the cases.

Why the news arrives now

On July 31, Batut issued public health recommendations for coping with extreme heat. Six days later came the first West Nile confirmation of the season. The two advisories landed close together, a detail that is easy to miss.

During heat waves, people go outside early in the morning and late in the evening, once the sun eases off. That happens to be the period when mosquitoes are most active. The hour you use to escape the heat is the hour a mosquito is waiting for you, so protecting yourself from bites on those days becomes a matter of habit rather than choice. The virus is active this summer in North Macedonia too, so this is not an isolated Serbian story.

The two confirmed cases point to one pattern, and it is a clear one: both patients are over 75, and both ended up in the hospital. If you have parents or grandparents that age at home, a screen on their bedroom window belongs at the top of the list.

Six measures Batut recommends

The recommendations in the statement are concrete and require neither a special budget nor equipment:

• Repellent on all exposed skin every time you are outdoors.
• Loose, light colored long clothing. A mosquito bites straight through a tight shirt, so snug clothing does not help.
• No time outdoors at dusk or dawn, when mosquitoes are most active.
• Protective screens on windows, doors and around beds.
• An air conditioned room when possible, since it sharply cuts the number of insects indoors. Forests and marshes should be avoided.
• Emptying standing water once a week, from flowerpots, pet food and water bowls, buckets, barrels and cans. Discarded tires and anything else that collects water should be cleared away.

For trips abroad, especially to tropical and subtropical regions, Batut asks that all of these measures be applied without exception.

Which measure actually makes the biggest difference?

Repellent and screens protect you. Emptying a flowerpot cuts the number of mosquitoes around the house, so it works for the whole street. Culex mosquitoes breed in small, still water, and that kind of water in a yard or on a balcony is something people create themselves, a bucket left full for a week, or a saucer sitting under a flowerpot.

That is why this step costs nothing and takes five minutes a week. It barely matters if one household on the street does it, but if everyone does, the mosquito count around the building actually drops.

When to see a doctor

Batut’s statement leaves no room for waiting. If symptoms consistent with the neuroinvasive form of the disease appear, contact your doctor immediately. Do not wait until Monday, and do not assume it will pass on its own.

The surveillance season is not over. These are the first two cases of 2026, not the last. Monitoring continues for as long as mosquitoes stay active, which means Batut will keep updating the numbers through August and September. Until then, the most useful thing you can do is completely down to earth: repellent in your bag, a screen on the window, and an empty bucket in the yard.