The luxury cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak and marooned off the coast of Cape Verde since Sunday left for Spain on Wednesday after three people, two of them seriously ill, were evacuated, a Reuters witness said.
The MV Hondius, with nearly 150 people on board, is expected to dock in Tenerife in the Canary Islands within three days, Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia told a press conference in Madrid. Those still on board were not presenting any symptoms of the disease at the time of departure, she said.
Once in Tenerife, all non-Spanish citizens will be repatriated to their home countries if they remain healthy, the minister said. The 14 Spanish passengers will be quarantined in a military hospital in Madrid for a duration determined by when they may have had contact with the virus, which has a 45-day incubation period.
Three people — a Dutch couple and a German national — have died in the outbreak. The World Health Organization has counted eight suspected cases in total, including a Swiss citizen now being treated in Zurich, with three confirmed by laboratory testing. The strain has been formally typed as Andes hantavirus, which circulates in South America and is most associated with rodent-borne respiratory illness.
Argentina’s health ministry said it would conduct rodent trapping and analysis in Ushuaia, the southern city where the Hondius cruise originated. Officials are also reconstructing the itinerary of the deceased Dutch passengers, who travelled in Argentina and Chile before symptoms appeared on board. The WHO’s working theory is that the index cases were infected ashore — possibly during bird-watching — before limited human-to-human transmission occurred between cabin-sharing close contacts. The wider public health risk has been assessed as low.
Source: Ada Derana.
