Short Report: Investigating Oropouche as a possible etiology for fevers of unknown origin in a clinical cohort from Colombia, 2013-2015

Currently, the largest outbreak of Oropouche virus (OROV) in Latin America and the Caribbean, has also spread across the globe to Italy, Spain, and Germany, bringing this virus into the public domain. With over 8,000 cases and counting in Brazil, there have been two deaths in young women with no known comorbidities, and infection with Oropouche was associated with a late term stillbirth. While OROV has been sporadically detected in Colombia since 2017, with a handful of cases in Cucuta and Leticia, the distribution of OROV prior to that remains unknown. Therefore, we undertook to test a clinical cohort of febrile patients from Colombia to determine if OROV was circulating within the human population earlier than previously determined. We screened 631 serum samples collected in 2014-2015 from three municipalities: Cucuta, Los Patio, and Ocana. We found evidence of OROV infection in three patients from Ocana, though live virus was not recoverable from patient sera. These data suggest that OROV circulation, while sporadically detected in Colombia, has circulated earlier than previously thought. With the emergence and expansion of new or neglected viruses, there is a need to expand screening of febrile patients both retro- and prospectively to describe and better understand the distribution of arbovirus circulation in human populations. Surveillance for OROV across South America is necessary going forward, especially as the outbreak in Brazil continues.