Evacuated Cruise Passengers Test Positive For Hantavirus

Two more cruise ship passengers have tested positive for hantavirus after being evacuated home from the Canary Islands.

Earlier, officials from the Spanish Health Ministry, the World Health Organization and the cruise company Oceanwide Expeditions had said none of the more than 140 people who were then on the Hondius had shown symptoms of the virus.

On Sunday, the US Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that one of the 17 repatriated Americans had tested mildly ​positive for the Andes strain of the rat virus, while a second had shown mild symptoms. 

A French passenger who was evacuated from the MV Hondius also tested positive after she developed symptoms while on a chartered flight from Tenerife to Paris

French Health Minister Stephanie Rist said on Monday that she is in hospital and her condition had worsened overnight. 

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The Daily Mail reports: This brings the number of confirmed cases to eight, including a Dutch woman and a German woman who died, a Briton hospitalised in South Africa, a Briton hospitalised in the Netherlands, a Dutch man also in the Netherlands, and a Swiss national. 

Spain insisted it took ‘all measures’ to prevent hantavirus spreading from evacuees on the cruise ship hit by the virus who left the Canary Islands.

‘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,’ the health ministry said in a statement.

Spain, the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the cruise company Oceanwide Expeditions had previously insisted none of the more than 140 people who were then on the Hondius had shown symptoms of the virus. 

In the UK, 20 Britons have arrived at Arrowe Park Hospital in Merseyside where they will begin 45 days of self-isolation, after landing in Manchester on a chartered Titan Airways flight from Tenerife.

More than 90 of the passengers and crew of the Hondius were sent home on Sunday, while the last 24 guests still on board the ship are set ​to be evacuated on Monday afternoon.

All of the passengers were escorted Sunday from the ship to shore by personnel in full-body protective gear and breathing masks. 

On Monday, the 17 American nationals arrived at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre – which has a federally funded quarantine facility – where medics will assess whether they have been in close contact with any symptomatic people and their risk levels for spreading the virus. 

One of the American passengers tested positive for the hantavirus but is not showing any symptoms, while another has minor symptoms.

‘One passenger will be transported to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit upon arrival, while other passengers will go to the National Quarantine Unit for assessment and monitoring,’ said Kayla Thomas, a spokesperson for the Nebraska Medicine hospital that will help care for the passengers.

‘The passenger who is going to the Biocontainment Unit tested positive for the virus but does not have symptoms,’ she added.

The medical school also has a special unit for treating people with highly infectious diseases that was used early in the pandemic for Covid-19 patients and previously for Ebola patients.

In France, 22 people have been identified as contact cases after being exposed to someone who later died of the virus. 

They included eight people who had travelled on an April 25 flight between Saint Helena and Johannesburg, and 14 more on a flight between Johannesburg and Amsterdam. 

Those flights were boarded by a 69-year-old Dutch woman who died of the virus on April 26, following her 70-year-old husband’s death from the same disease on April 11.  

WHO recommended close monitoring of the former passengers, and many countries quarantined them.

The 20 Britons will spend 72 hours at Arrowe Park Hospital before being asked to self-isolate for a further 42 days at home.