A luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak and marooned for days off the coast of Cape Verde with close to 150 people on board was due to head to Spain, while South Africa confirmed it identified among the victims a strain of the virus that can – in rare cases – spread among humans.
And the Swiss government said a man who returned to Switzerland after being a passenger on the MV Hondius was infected with the hantavirus and was being treated in Zurich. It said there was no danger to the broader population.
A Dutch couple and a German national who had been on the ship have died, while a British national is in intensive care in South Africa. The Netherlands is preparing to evacuate three patients who are on board.
Since the start of the outbreak, the World Health Organisation has stressed that the risk to the broader public is low.
People are usually infected by hantavirus through contact with infected rodents or their urine, their droppings or their saliva. Human-to-human transmission is rare.
But a limited spread among close contacts has been observed in some previous outbreaks with the Andes strain, which has spread in South America, including Argentina, where the cruise trip started in March.
A presentation seen by Reuters said tests done by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases revealed that the Andes strain was the cause of infection in the Dutch woman who died in Johannesburg as well as in the British man who is still in hospital there.
“This is the only strain that is known to cause human-to-human transmission, but such transmission is very rare and as said earlier, it only happens due to very close contact,” the presentation said.
