An American national and a French woman evacuated from the cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak have tested positive, officials said yesterday, as the complex operation to repatriate those on board continued.
The French woman, one of five passengers from France flown back from the MV Hondius and placed in isolation in Paris, started to feel unwell on Sunday night and “tests came back positive,” French Minister of Health Stephanie Rist said.
Late on Sunday, the US Department of Health and Human Services said that one American national evacuated from the ship had “mild symptoms” and that another had tested positive for the Andes virus, the only hantavirus strain that is transmissible between humans.
Photo: AP
Three passengers from the ship, a Dutch couple and a German woman, have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.
No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is endemic in Argentina, where the ship set sail last month, but health officials have said that the risk for global public health is low and downplayed comparisons to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rist said that 22 more contact cases had been identified among French nationals, including eight people who had traveled on an April 25 flight between Saint Helena and Johannesburg, and 14 more on a flight between Johannesburg and Amsterdam.
The Dutch woman who died was on the flight to Johannesburg and later briefly boarded a flight to Amsterdam, but was removed prior to takeoff.
The repatriation operation evacuated 94 people of 19 different nationalities on Sunday, Spanish Minister of Health Monica Garcia announced on Tenerife, in Spain’s Canary Islands.
Spanish officials said the evacuation of most of the ship’s nearly 150 passengers and crew, which includes 23 nationalities, would continue until the final repatriation flights to Australia and the Netherlands yesterday afternoon.
The Dutch-flagged ship would refuel yesterday morning and was expected to depart for the Netherlands with about 30 crew members at 7pm.
Passengers in blue medical suits began disembarking the vessel on Sunday to reach the small industrial port of Granadilla on Tenerife.
Canary Islands authorities had warned that the operation must be completed by yesterday, when adverse weather conditions would force the ship to leave.
The Atlantic archipelago’s regional government had consistently resisted taking in the ship, which was only authorized to anchor offshore.
The WHO recommends a 42-day quarantine and “active follow-up,” including daily checks for symptoms such as fever, the WHO Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention director Maria van Kerkhove said in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Greek Ministry of Health said that a Greek male evacuee would spend 45 days in mandatory hospital quarantine in Athens, while 14 Spanish citizens would also isolate at a military hospital in Madrid.
Australia said it would place its six evacuees in a purpose-built quarantine facility north of Perth for at least three weeks.
British officials said 20 UK citizens who were aboard the ship would be taken to a hospital near Liverpool for tests and about 72 hours of quarantine.
A top US health official said that the 17 American passengers would not necessarily be quarantined.
Depending on the estimated risk, passengers can choose to go home “without exposing other people on the way,” US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acting director Jay Bhattacharya said.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that policy “may have risks.”
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