Another evacuee from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship has been confirmed to have the deadly disease, according to Spain’s health ministry.
A Spaniard, who was quarantining in Madrid after being evacuated from the luxury MV Hondius and is showing no symptoms, provisionally tested positive for the rat-borne disease on Monday.
It marks the third case of passengers testing positive for the illness after they were repatriated to their home countries.
On Monday, a symptomless American and a French national both tested positive.
The French woman is now in ‘serious condition’ with hantavirus, according to the French government, after her health rapidly declined in hospital.
And a second American national on Sunday’s repatriation flight has also shown mild symptoms, according to the US health department, who added that both passengers travelled back in ‘biocontainment units out of an abundance of caution’.
The cruise ship left Tenerife for the Netherlands on Monday after its final six passengers – four Australians, one Briton and one New Zealander – and some crew members were evacuated.
Three people – a Dutch couple and a German woman – have died after travelling on the vessel, two of whom were confirmed to have had the virus.
Persons with protective suits wait in line after disembarking from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius docked in the port of Granadilla de Abona on the island of Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands on May 11
Passengers wave from a coach after disembarking from the cruise ship MV Hondius, affected by a hantavirus outbreak, at the port of Granadilla de Abona, Tenerife, Spain, May 11
Medical staff direct some of the last passengers to be evacuated from the MV Hondius on May 11, in Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands, Spain
More than 90 of the passengers and crew of the Hondius were sent home on Sunday, after being escorted from the ship to shore by personnel in full-body protective gear and breathing masks.
Two planes with 28 crew members landed in the Netherlands on Tuesday, where they will undergo medical testing, quarantine and eventual repatriation.
It comes as a Dutch hospital in the city of Nijmegen treating a hantavirus patient quarantined 12 staffers in a preventative measure – after blood and urine were handled without updated and more strict protocols.
‘We will carefully investigate the course of events to learn from this so that it can be prevented in the future,’ said Bertine Lahuis, the chair of the Radboudumc hospital’s executive board.
Staff will be in isolation for six weeks.
The French woman who tested positive for the virus reported symptoms to doctors onboard the cruise but was told they were likely just anxiety, according to the Spanish health minister.
She had been suffering from flu-like symptoms but they appeared to be easing, and she did not have a fever, Javier Padilla said.
But despite the deaths of three people who had been onboard the ship, doctors from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the Spanish foreign health service dismissed her symptoms as anxiety or stress, he added.
‘They were not thinking that these symptoms were compatible with hantavirus. Why? Because what she was telling [them] was [that she had] an episode of coughing some days ago that had disappeared, and what she was having at that moment was kind of like stress or anxiety or nervousness. So it was not catalogued [as hantavirus],’ Padilla said.
The four other French nationals repatriated from the ship have been ‘immediately placed in strict isolation until further notice’, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said.
Hantaviruses are usually spread by wild rodents, but human transmission of the rare Andes strain is possible through close contact.
Seven cases of the Andes hantavirus have now been confirmed among people who were passengers on board the cruise ship, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday.
Despite reports from the US Department of Health and Human Services on Sunday that one of the 17 repatriated Americans tested mildly positive for the lethal Andes strain of hantavirus, the WHO and Spanish Government disregarded these findings.
The Spanish health ministry said that the US citizen’s tests in Cape Verde gave a result considered by the Americans as a ‘weak positive’, ‘although for us it was not conclusive’, and another that was negative, the ministry said.
‘The person in question did not show symptoms when they were in Cape Verde. However, the US authorities have decided to treat the case as positive. For that reason, they requested a separate evacuation, which was carried out in a separate boat,’ the ministry added.
This brings the number of confirmed cases to seven, including a Dutch woman and a German woman who died, a Briton hospitalised in South Africa, a Briton hospitalised in the Netherlands, a Dutch man also in the Netherlands, a Swiss national and a French national.
WHO has listed two other suspected cases – the Dutch man who died before being tested, and the British national on Tristan da Cunha, a remote South Atlantic island where there were no tests available.
Another British national who was previously hospitalised with hantavirus in South Africa after falling ill on the cruise is ‘clinically improving’, a health ministry spokesperson said.
The third British man with a confirmed case is 56-year-old Martin Anstee, a former police officer, who is receiving treatment in the Netherlands after working on the cruise ship.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.
