The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday said it is verifying whether any Taiwanese passengers were aboard the hantavirus-hit MV Hondius cruise ship, adding that it has established a task force to monitor the outbreak overseas and coordinate preventive measures.
It is the first time a task force has been formed to prevent a hantavirus outbreak.
The WHO yesterday said there were five confirmed cases of hantavirus from the vessel, and three suspected cases.
Photo: Reuters
Three people have died, it said.
Laboratory testing in South Africa and Switzerland confirmed that two of the people had the Andes strain of hantavirus, which is the only known strain that can spread between humans.
A Spanish passenger told Spanish daily El Pais that 23 passengers of the Dutch luxury cruise ship disembarked at St Helena and returned to their home countries, including a Taiwanese.
CDC Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said the agency compared passenger lists for the Hondius obtained through multiple sources and released by the cruise ship operator.
“Our preliminary assessment is that the information about the Taiwanese passenger is likely to be a rumor,” Lo said. “We tried to verify the information with our contacts at the WHO and with the cruise ship firm. Further information would be announced once we receive responses from them.”
CDC Deputy Director-General and spokeswoman Tseng Shu-hui (曾淑慧) said that there is no need to raise the global travel health advisory level for infectious diseases.
“The hantavirus outbreak was an isolated case as it involved only one cruise ship. Taiwan does not have long-tailed pygmy rice rats — the animal host of the Andes virus. The risk of direct importation of infectious disease to Taiwan would be limited, and the risk of a domestic outbreak would be low,” Tseng said.
The WHO has assessed that the most likely scenario for the outbreak was that a passenger became infected with hantavirus through environmental exposure while traveling in Argentina or elsewhere in region, and boarded the vessel during the incubation period, the centers said.
The person’s prolonged close contact with other travelers on board is believed to have led to the spread of the disease, the CDC said.
The organization has classified the overall risk of this event as moderate for the cruise ship setting and low at the global level.
The Hondius departed Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1 on a voyage across the South Atlantic, with stops at ecologically diverse locations including Antarctica, South Georgia, Nightingale Island, Tristan da Cunha, St Helena and Ascension Island.
The ship carried 86 passengers and 61 crew members from 23 countries and had been anchored off Praia, the capital of Cape Verde, before it departed on Wednesday for the Canary Islands.
Oceanwide Expeditions, the cruise operator, yesterday confirmed that 30 passengers disembarked at St Helena, including travelers confirmed as high-risk contacts, one of whom flew on a commercial flight to South Africa.
So far, the hantavirus cases found in Taiwan — whether locally acquired or imported from abroad — have been caused by Seoul virus strains, which are associated with lower severity and mortality rates.
The only two imported cases were from China in 2007 and from Indonesia in 2019, the centers said, adding that no cases linked to the Andes virus have been found.
Travelers to South America are advised not to come into close contact with rodents, it said.
Additional reporting by AFP
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