Hantavirus: Patients evacuated from cruise ship
Three patients with suspected hantavirus infections were being evacuated from a cruise ship to the Netherlands on Wednesday, the UN health agency said, as the vessel at the centre of a deadly outbreak remained off Cape Verde with nearly 150 people on board waiting to head to Spain’s Canary Islands.
Associated Press footage showed health workers in protective gear heading to the ship for the evacuation that included the ship’s British doctor, who Spain’s health ministry said had been in “serious condition” but has improved. An air ambulance later departed.
Three people have died, and one body remained on the ship, the World Health Organisation said. Eight cases have been recorded in all, three of them confirmed by laboratory testing. Hantavirus usually spreads by inhaling contaminated rodent droppings and can spread person-to-person, though the WHO calls that rare.
Contact tracing had begun on two continents, Europe and Africa, in search of infections around people who earlier left the ship, which departed over a month ago from South America for stops in Antarctica and several remote Atlantic islands.
Two Argentine officials investigating the origins of the outbreak said the government’s leading hypothesis is that a Dutch couple contracted the virus while bird-watching in the city of Ushuaia before boarding.
They said the couple visited a landfill during the tour and may have been exposed to rodents. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, with the investigation ongoing. Authorities previously said Ushuaia and surrounding Tierra del Fuego province had never recorded a hantavirus case.
The Dutch foreign ministry said the three people evacuated were a 41-year-old Dutch national, a 56-year-old British national and a 65-year-old German national who would be “immediately transferred to specialised hospitals in Europe.”
A Dutch hospital confirmed it would take one. German authorities were preparing for a second.
Two remain in “serious condition,” Dutch ship operator Oceanwide Expeditions said, and the third had no symptoms but was “closely associated” with a German passenger who died on the MV Hondius ship on May 2. Health officials said passengers and crew members still on the ship are without symptoms; the WHO said passengers represent 23 nationalities. Their journey to the Canary Islands will take three or four days, Spain’s health ministry said, adding that the arrival “won’t represent any risk for the public.”
Meanwhile, authorities said testing in Switzerland, South Africa and Senegal had shown positive for the Andes strain of the virus. The WHO says the species of hantavirus is found in South America, primarily in Argentina and Chile, and can spread between people, though that’s rare and only through close contact.
