Legionnaires' disease in Scotland
Surveillance report 2025

About this release

In 2023, Legionnaires' disease surveillance reporting changed frequency to annual in Scotland and this report presents data from calendar year 2025. We continue to develop these reports in collaboration with our stakeholders.

Main points

• Case numbers and incidence in 2025 remained the same as 2024 with 57 cases, an incidence of 10.3 per million population. The number of cases and incidence has been increasing since 2021. The latest report from ECDC also describes increasing trends across EU/EEA countries to 2024.
• In 2024 and 2025 case numbers and incidence were the highest observed, excluding the 2012 outbreak, with no outbreaks, common sources, exposures or links identified.
• 89.5% of cases were aged 50 years and older; comparable to the age distribution reported for Europe by ECDC in 2024, where 87% of cases were in those aged 50 years and older.
• There were two reported deaths in Legionnaires' disease cases, equating to a case fatality rate of 3.5%. In Europe, the case fatality rate for Legionnaires' disease cases was reported to be 9% in 2024.
• Similar to most of the previous years, with the exception of 2021 and 2023, most cases were travel-associated (68.4%).
• The number of community-acquired cases decreased from 32 (60.4%) in 2023 to 18 (31.6%) in 2025, but the number of community-acquired cases remain higher than that reported from 2016 to 2022.

This figure is a line chart of annual Legionnaires’ disease cases in Scotland from 2004 to 2025. A peak in cases was observed in 2012 (103 cases) when there was a large Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Edinburgh. Number of cases remained stable from 2017 to 2019, before dropping to a low of 16 cases in 2021. Case numbers then increased reaching a high of 57 in 2025.

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Annual total of cases of Legionnaires' disease in Scotland, 2004 to 2025

Background

Legionella infections are notifiable under the Public Health etc. (Scotland) Act 2008. National enhanced surveillance of Legionnaires' disease has been conducted alongside the Scottish Microbiology Reference Laboratory (SMiRL) since 1994 collecting demographic data, clinical and microbiological information, and risk factors. This allows us to identify and monitor trends, detect outbreaks, identify potential sources of infection and inform measures to reduce the public health risk.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be September 2027.