Hantavirus latest: Three more people infected with deadly virus as last passengers leave cruise ship – UK Times

The last remaining passengers on a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak disembarked Monday and boarded flights to more than 20 countries to enter quarantine.

A French woman was the latest to be confirmed as infected, while an American was suspected of infection after initial testing.

Three cruise ship passengers have died, and six people with confirmed or suspected cases of hantavirus are being quarantined, according to the WHO. The lab results of the American who tested positive were inconclusive, WHO spokesperson Sarah Tyler said Monday.

Passengers began flying home aboard military and government planes Sunday after the MV Hondius anchored in the Canary Islands. Personnel in full-body protective gear and breathing masks escorted the travelers from ship to shore in Tenerife, an effort that concluded Monday.

The UK health officials have begin contact tracing for those in touch with British passengers and crew of the Hantavirus-striken MV Hondius.

Announcing the measure, Chief Scientific Officer at the UK Health Security Agency Professor Robin May told BBC Radio 4: “Contact tracing is still very much ongoing and we’ll continue to do that over the next few weeks actually, particularly on stopover points of the cruise ship on islands and, and similar.”

It came as the evacuated and repatriated crew and passengers were put in isolation for 45 days.

Professor May, however, attempted to assure viewers about the spread of Hantavirus, saying it is not the same as Covid-19 pandemic.

Explaining the need for contact tracing measure, he said: “People these days travel a lot as we all know, so it’s important to keep up with where they are, but at the minute we have reached out and contacted a huge number of people already, and again my thanks to them for participating in this.

“But yes… the number of people we’re contacting may continue to rise over the coming days, but most people have already been contacted.”

Health officials have said the deadly outbreak of hantavirus may have been caused by a Dutch couple contracting the illness during a bird-watching outing in Ushuaia, Argentina.

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.

However, locally not everyone agrees with this theory.

Authorities previously said that Ushuaia and the surrounding province of Tierra del Fuego had never recorded a case of the hantavirus.

Juan Facundo Petrina, the province’s Director General of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, told the BBC there have been “no record of hantavirus cases in our history.”

He stressed that it is unlikely the virus came from his province and the endemic zone for hantavirus lies more than 1,500km (930 miles) to the north.

The condition of a British man who was admitted to a ⁠hospital in Johannesburg after falling ill with hantavirus is gradually improving, a South African health ⁠ministry spokesperson said.

“The British patient is clinically improving but still ill,” the spokesperson Foster Mohale said. “This means his condition is improving, gradually so.”

The ‌man was medically evacuated to South Africa on April 27 after presenting ‌with a fever, shortness of ‌breath and signs of pneumonia.

He disembarked from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship MV Hondius ⁠at Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean.

Clinical assessments and testing are “well underway” for British passengers from the cruise ship hit by deadly hantavirus who are isolating at a UK hospital, health bosses have said.

Twenty British nationals from the MV Hondius, together with a German who is a UK resident and a Japanese passenger, were taken to Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral on Sunday after the ship docked in Tenerife.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said on Monday evening that clinical assessments and testing at the hospital were well underway.

Professor Robin May, chief scientific officer at UKHSA, said: “Clinical assessments and testing are now underway at Arrowe Park and the staff there have once again shown outstanding dedication and professionalism in providing the highest standard of care. We are enormously grateful for everything they are doing.

“Passengers will continue to receive the full support of our teams and NHS specialists throughout their stay and beyond.

“We want to reassure both passengers and the wider public that robust arrangements are in place, and that everyone involved will be looked after every step of the way.”

A French woman and an American tested positive for hantavirus, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to seven, but experts say the level of risk to the public has not changed.

Dr Giulia Gallo, Postdoctoral Scientist in the Viral Glycoproteins Group, The Pirbright Institute, said: “It is not surprising, the general hope was that no more cases would be detected, but given that it takes a considerable amount of time for symptoms to develop, health agencies have put in place protocols to minimise the risk of transmission to the healthy passengers, and the population, in case this would happen.”

“These potentially new cases derive from the same cluster of exposed people on the ship. Monitoring and quarantining passengers and crew staff is still the best approach to ensure that the rest of the population remains unaffected by this situation.”