Hantavirus likely spread between cruise passengers: WHO
The World Health Organization said it suspected rare human-to-human transmission of the deadly hantavirus among very close contacts on a luxury cruise ship that crashed with seven confirmed or suspected cases.
Human-to-human transmission is not common and the United Nations health agency has reiterated that the risk to the wider public is low from a disease that is often spread through contact with infected rodents.
Authorities said that a Dutch couple and a German citizen died while a British passenger was taken off the ship and taken to intensive care in South Africa.
Oceanwide Expeditions, the operator of the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, said two crew members needed urgent medical care.
Another person with a suspected case reported only mild fever.
The Dutch foreign ministry said it was preparing to move three people from the ship to the Netherlands.
It was not yet clear when and where the approximately 150 people still on the ship would disembark.
The cruise ship hit by the deadly epidemic anchored off the coast of Cape Verde.
The island nation off the Atlantic coast of West Africa was planned to be the final destination, but due to the epidemic, the ship was not allowed to disembark passengers.
People are usually infected with hantavirus through contact with infected rodents or their urine, feces, or saliva.
However, limited spread among close contacts has been observed in some previous outbreaks involving the Andean strain, which has spread throughout South America, including Argentina, and which WHO believes may have played a role.
Tests continue.
Hondius left Ushuaia in southern Argentina in March.
The World Health Organization said it was told there were no mice on the ship.
“We believe that human-to-human transmission can occur between really close contacts, husband and wife, people who share the same cabin,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, told reporters in Geneva. he said.
Van Kerkhove said the focus now is to relocate the two sick passengers still on board and then continue the ship’s journey to the Canary Islands.
But later in the day, Spain’s health ministry said it saw no need for the ship to stop in the Canary Islands if everyone who was sick was removed from Cape Verde unless new cases emerged.
The UN health agency said that in the first cases of the Dutch couple, who joined the ship after traveling in Argentina, the assumption was that they were infected before joining the cruise.
It was stated that other cases may have been infected during bird watching trips to islands where birds and rodents live as part of the cruise.
Hondius carries passengers mostly from the UK, US and Spain on the luxury cruise, which departs from the southern tip of Argentina in late March.
The cruise visited the Antarctic peninsula, South Georgia and Tristan da Cunha, some of the most remote islands on the planet.
The trip was marketed as an Antarctic nature cruise, with mooring prices ranging from 14,000 to 22,000 euros ($22,000 to $35,000).
Van Kerkhove said South Africa’s National Institute of Communicable Diseases was working to sequence the virus and results could be available by Wednesday.
