Fig. 1.

Administrative districts of Germany sectioned according to the risk for humans to acquire TBEV infection and the location of districts with small ruminant flocks participating in this TBEV antibody study.

Districts within TBEV risk areas are coloured in yellow, non-risk areas are uncoloured. This classification is based on human TBE cases notified between 2002 and 2017 [22].

In total, 71 small ruminant farms in five German federal states (Schleswig-Holstein: SH, Lower Saxony: LS, North Rhine-Westphalia: NRW, Baden-Wuerttemberg: BW, Bavaria: BAV) participated in the study. The district Emsland, coloured in red, is the first TBEV risk area in the federal state of LS since 2019 (in this district no small ruminants were sampled).

Districts with participating small ruminant flocks within the TBEV risk areas are coloured in blue, districts with participating small ruminant flocks within the non-TBEV risk areas are coloured in green. The black stars indicate the localisation of the flocks with seropositive TBEV small ruminants, GÖ = district of Göttingen, MSP = district of Main-Spessart, and Sallandse Heuvelrug a TBEV hot spot in the Netherlands. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)