A French patient is fighting for her life despite initially showing no symptoms of the deadly rat disease hantavirus when she was taken off the cruise ship MV Hondius
Fears are growing that hantavirus could spread worldwide after a woman evacuated from the death ship was left fighting for her life, despite displaying no initial symptoms.
She appeared to have no trace of hantavirus when she was taken off the infected cruise ship MV Hondius on Sunday. The woman was among five French passengers allowed ashore after it docked off Tenerife.
When she arrived on dry land, she showed no sign of the condition that had killed three. But on her flight from the Canary Islands to France she began to feel unwell and her condition deteriorated rapidly overnight.
Tests ‘came back positive’ and she remains in a ‘serious condition’ in hospital, according to French health minister Stéphanie Rist. The fact the virus is asymptomatic means all 147 who were on board the ship could still be at risk even if they feel well.
Some passengers on their way to repatriation flights on the bus were pictured with their masks off or lowered below their mouths.
Stephanie said the woman had started to feel unwell on the plane and ‘unfortunately her symptoms worsened overnight’.
An American – one of 17 on board – is also said to have tested positive without displaying symptoms. They were evacuated in isolation on a separate boat as a precaution.
Their positive test result was described as ‘mild’ and they were being treated in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit which was used early in the pandemic for Covid-19 patients and previously for Ebola sufferers.
Health chiefs are probing at least up to 10 cases of Andes hantavirus among passengers on board the ship. They include a couple from the Netherlands and a German woman who died.
A Brit man medically evacuated to South Africa with symptoms including a fever, shortness of breath and signs of pneumonia was said to be ‘clinically improving’
A second Brit with the virus is receiving treatment in the Netherlands while a third suspected case is being monitored on the remote Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha where the ship stopped in mid-April.
A Dutch man and a Swiss national have also tested positive. Spain insisted it had taken ‘all measures’ to prevent hantavirus spreading from cruise ship evacuees.
A health ministry spokesman said: “From the start all the measures adopted have aimed at cutting the possible chains of transmission.
“All measures for prevention and control of transmission have been applied.”
A total of 20 Brit former passengers arrived at Arrowe Park Hospital in Merseyside where they will be kept in isolation for 72 hours.
It was used to house Brits returning from Wuhan, China, at the start of the pandemic six years ago. They will then be expected to self-isolate for 42 days at home.
Another Brit is isolating on remote Pitcairn in the South Pacific which has a population of just 35. The government of French Polynesia announced a hantavirus ‘contact’ passed through Tahiti without the authorities ‘being informed’.
“The person in question is not showing any symptoms and is currently isolated in quarantine on Pitcairn,” the post added.
The World Health Organization has recommended close monitoring of all former passengers. Many countries have quarantined them.
The organization’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed the public should not be worried about the outbreak.
“This is not another Covid,” he said.
“The risk to the public is low. So they shouldn’t be scared and they shouldn’t panic.”
Hantavirus usually spreads from rodent droppings and is not easily transmitted between people.
But the Andes strain of the virus detected in the ship could spread between folk via close contact in rare cases. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
The World Health Organization’s top epidemiologist Maria van Kerkhove recommended all passengers have daily health checks. Around 40% per cent of cases result in death, according to the US Centers for Disease Control.