Import of Rift Valley fever to China: a potential new threat?

China has a large population, and its climate and the wide distribution of the mosquito vectors in south China are high risk factors for RVF outbreak. More importantly, once RVFV is introduced into permissive ecologies, it can become endemic, with the potential to spread into other non-endemic regions (Murithi et al., 2011). If there is an RVF outbreak in China, the disease may spread quickly to Southeast Asia and to other countries in Asia. Combined with the import of the Zika and yellow fever viruses this year (Su et al., 2016a; Wang L. et al., 2016), importation of arboviral pathogens poses a huge challenge for China. Therefore, all necessary measures should be taken to prevent and control RVF import and spread in China in the future.