Detection of yellow fever virus genomes from four imported cases in China

•The clinical features of four imported cases of yellow fever are reported.•Next Generation Sequencing was used to analyze the viral genome in these YF cases.•All viruses were highly homologous with Angola 71 strain and showed no significant mutation compared with YFV-17D vaccine strain.•Urine was firstly used to detect the viral genome in clinic samples.

Yellow fever virus (YFV), as the first proven human-pathogenic virus, is still a major public health problem with a dramatic upsurge in recent years. This is a report on four imported cases of yellow fever virus into China identified by whole genome sequencing. Phylogenetic analysis was performed and the results showed that these four viruses were highly homologous with Angola 71 strains (AY968064). In addition, effective mutations of amino acids were not observed in the E protein domain of four viruses, thus confirming the effectiveness of the YFV-17D vaccine (X03700). Although there is low risk of local transmission in most part of China, the increasing public health risk of YF caused by international exchange should not be ignored.