Two new suspected cases of hantavirus were reported yesterday, one in Spain and the other on the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, as experts race to contain an outbreak that began on a luxury cruise ship.
The announcements in locations thousands of miles apart will fuel concern about a cluster of cases so far associated with three deaths – though the World Health Organisation has repeatedly said the risk to the wider public is low and the virus does not transmit easily.
A 32-year-old woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante has symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection and is being tested, Spanish health authorities said.
She was briefly sitting on a plane behind a Dutch woman who had contracted the virus on the MV Hondius, Secretary of State for Health Javier Padilla told reporters.
That Dutch woman left the flight in Johannesburg feeling ill before it took off on April 25 and later died in hospital.
A British man was also suspected of having the disease on Tristan da Cunha, the UK Health Security Agency said. Officials there said he was a passenger on the Dutch-flagged ship which made a stop on the island on April 13 to 15.
“Based on the dynamics of this outbreak, based on how it is spreading and not spreading amongst the people on the ship, the people who have disembarked, as well, we continue to consider the risk as low for the general population,” Anais Legand, WHO technical officer for viral threats, said in an online briefing.
Both new suspected cases have links to the original cluster of cases, officials said.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified the hantavirus outbreak as a ‘level 3’ emergency response, the lowest level of emergency activation.
Other experts have also stressed the low probability of a widespread contagion, but the outbreak has put authorities on high alert as they urge all who have been in contact with passengers who left the Hondius to watch out for possible symptoms.
The cruise left Argentina in March with around 150 passengers and stopped in the Antarctic and other locations before heading north to waters off Cape Verde west of Africa where it has briefly held this week after news of the cases emerged.
WHO officials have confirmed that some of the cases on the ship are caused by the Andes strain of hantavirus, the only version that can spread between people, usually through prolonged and close contact with a person who is showing symptoms.
Three people – a Dutch couple and a German national – have died following the outbreak – the first of its kind on a ship.
Four others confirmed to be infected, two Britons, a Dutch and a Swiss national, are being treated in hospitals in the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland, and a fifth case is suspected, according to WHO.
The ship, with around 150 passengers and crew on board, is currently heading to the Canary Islands.
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