The U.S. Naval Hospital Naples is warning people to take precautions against West Nile virus after a confirmed case of the illness among its military community in Italy. (Gino Mattorano/U.S. Army)

NAPLES, Italy — A Navy hospital here is warning people to take precautions against West Nile virus after a confirmed case of the illness among its military community.

U.S. Naval Hospital Naples officials confirmed a single case of the infection among Navy personnel in a Facebook post last week. The hospital cautioned that while the overall risk for contracting the virus was low, “continued vigilance is important.”

“Prevention is key,” the hospital said in the Aug. 28 post, adding that people should wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants, and consider wearing a mosquito repellent, among other precautions, to lessen the risk of infection.

The hospital also said it was using traps to monitor and reduce the mosquito population on the Naval Support Activity Naples Support Site where service members and their families live, work and shop.

The hospital did not offer an update on Wednesday on the infected person’s condition or when the case was diagnosed.

There is no medication to treat West Nile, which primarily is passed to humans by infected mosquitos, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most people who acquire West Nile do not feel any signs, but some develop flu-like symptoms including fever, headache and body aches. Less than 1% of people in the U.S. who are infected with the virus develop severe symptoms that affect the central nervous system, require hospitalization or result in death, the CDC said on its website.

Symptoms typically develop two to six days after being bitten by an infected mosquito but can take two weeks or longer to appear, according to the CDC.

The confirmed incident at NSA Naples appears to be the only reported West Nile infection among military personnel in Italy, which is leading Europe in human cases of the virus.

The U.S. Naval Hospital Naples said it was using traps to monitor and reduce the mosquito population on the Naval Support Activity Naples Support Site location, after a confirmed case of West Nile virus among its military community. (Alison Bath/Stars and Stripes)

There were no cases at U.S. Army Garrison Italy in Vicenza, officials there said. Spokespeople at Naval Air Station Sigonella on the island of Sicily and at Aviano Air Base in Italy’s northeastern region could not provide information on their populations Wednesday.

As of Aug. 6, there were 202 reported locally acquired cases of the virus in humans throughout Europe so far this year, according to a joint monthly report from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and European Food Safety Authority on Aug. 13.

Of those, 168, or 83%, were in Italy, according to the report.

As of Aug. 28, there had been 67 human cases of West Nile in the Campania region where NSA Naples is located, with 39 of those reported in the city of Naples, the hospital said in its Facebook post.

The first confirmed case of West Nile in Pordenone Province, where Aviano Air Base is located, was reported last week in the commune of Azzano Decimo, according to Italian news media reports.

There have been 10 deaths related to West Nile in Italy, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and European Food Safety Authority report, which also indicated that the number of cases this year were slightly above average for the last decade but remained lower than 2024 and 2018.