There are now five confirmed cases of hantavirus in the outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise, World Health Organisation has said.
Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO said eight cases of the virus have been reported, with five confirmed cases and three suspected cases.
Although none of the passengers or crew currently on board are symptomatic Dr Ghebreyesus warned more cases may be identified given the incubation period of the virus, which can be up to six weeks, but said the public health risk is low.
British passengers on board, who are now on their way to the Canary Islands, may have to isolate in the UK for 45 days as the race is on to contain the outbreak.
Professor Robin May, chief scientific officer at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme that in the “most extreme case of incubation” of hantavirus people may have to isolate for “up to eight weeks”. However, the general consensus is people need to isolate for “probably six weeks, and so that’s the period of isolation, 45 days that we’re likely to be recommending”.
Recap: Five cases confirmed
Five of the eight suspected cases of hantavirus linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship have now been confirmed, the World Health Organization said at a press briefing earlier on Thursday.
The wider public health threat from the outbreak remained low, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that the WHO was aware of reports of other patients and there may be more cases due to the long incubation period of the virus.
‘They will be completely isolated from the public’
Spain’s head of civil protection Virginia Barcones says people evacuated from the boat will be “completely isolated from public.”
She has told a press conference: “From the moment when we see that asymptomatic people are ready to be evacuated from our country, there will be a quick process.
“They will not leave the boat until the plane is there to take them to their countries. Once they leave the boat, they will be taken by road, it’s about a 10-minute drive.”
She adds: “Mechanisms are being put together, but they will be completely isolated from the public.
“They will be taken to an isolated fenced off place, they will be in isolated vehicles, they will reach an area of the airport that will be completely isolated.
“There is no possibility of contact.”
Ship to be inspected when it arrives in Canary Islands
Pedro Gullon, general director of public health and equity in Spain, has just told a press conference that the ship will be inspected when it arrives in the Canary Islands.
He said: “Then we are in touch with doctors on board so we get a daily update on everything that’s happening on the boat.
“Once we know what’s going on, if there are no new cases, we can proceed to take people to their place of origin.”
Two test negative as Dutch authorities probe possible hantavirus exposure on plane
The Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) said on Thursday it had tested three people showing symptoms for the Andes strain of hantavirus, Reuters reports.
Two tested negative, while the third result was still being analysed.
RIVM said all three developed symptoms after coming into contact with a person infected with the virus while aboard an aircraft, and that it would continue to monitor them.
Dozens of passengers left hantavirus-stricken cruise ship after first fatality
More than two dozen passengers from at least 12 different countries left the cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak without contact tracing nearly two weeks after the first passenger died on board, the ship operator and Dutch officials said Thursday.
Health authorities on at least four continents are now tracking down and in some cases monitoring the cruise passengers who returned home on 24 April, and trying to trace others who may have come into contact with them.
Experts say the risk to the wider public is considered low because hantavirus — usually spread by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings — isn’t easily transmitted between people.
The Dutch health ministry said Thursday that a flight attendant on a plane briefly boarded by an infected cruise passenger in South Africa was showing symptoms of hantavirus and would be tested in an isolation ward at a hospital in Amsterdam. The cruise passenger, also a Dutch woman, was too ill to fly and was taken off the plane in Johannesburg, where she died.
If the woman tests positive, she could be the first known person not on the MV Hondius to become infected in the outbreak.
Three cruise ship passengers have died in the outbreak, and several others are sick. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
Watch: WHO investigate past movements of birdwatching couple linked to hantavirus outbreak
‘This is not covid’, WHO says
The WHO repeated that the risk to the general public was “low” even if the Andean strain of the virus, found in several victims, can in rare cases be transmitted among humans.
“This is not coronavirus, this is a very different virus,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director of epidemic and pandemic management, told a press conference.
“This is not the same situation we were in six years ago.” The WHO said it was working on step-by-step guidance for when the dozens of passengers remaining on the ship, which is sailing to the Canary Islands, arrives there on Saturday or Sunday and the passengers disembark and travel home.
None of these passengers currently have any symptoms.
Threat from hantavirus for general public ‘remains low’
Health chiefs continue to stress that the overall threat to the public from hantavirus remains low.
Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, director of the department of epidemic and pandemic threat management at the WHO, said: “The risk to the general public is low.
“Hantaviruses are relatively uncommon, even though there may be thousands of cases estimated each year.”
Deadly hantavirus cruise ship outbreak caused by couple’s birdwatching trip to landfill site, experts fear
The deadly outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship may have been caused by a Dutch couple contracting the illness during a bird-watching outing in Ushuaia, Argentina, health officials fear.
Two Argentine officials investigating the origins of the outbreak on the ship, which sailed from southern Argentina, said this is now the government’s leading hypothesis.
The couple visited a landfill site during the birdwatching tour, authorities said, where they may have been exposed to rodents carrying the infection. Authorities previously said that Ushuaia and the surrounding province of Tierra del Fuego had never recorded a case of the hantavirus.
Read more here:
‘Good news’ on patient in hospital with hantavirus
Two Britons who were medically evacuated from a hantavirus-hit cruise ship are improving, global health officials have said.
A British passenger, understood to be a 69-year-old man, was taken to South Africa on April 27 and is receiving care at a private health facility in Sandton, Johannesburg.
Another Briton, Martin Anstee, 56, was taken off the MV Hondius on Wednesday and flown to the Netherlands to receive specialist medical care.
Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, from the World Health Organisation (WHO), said two patients – known to include a Briton – remain in hospital in the Netherlands, and another Briton is in intensive care in South Africa.
She told a WHO press briefing: “I am very happy to say the patient in South Africa is doing better, and the two patients in the Netherlands we hear are stable. So that is actually very good news.”
Source: independent.co.uk