Cruise ship doctors dismissed a French woman’s hantavirus symptoms as ‘anxiety’ before she became critically ill, officials have revealed.
The woman, who was evacuated from the MV Hondius in Tenerife over the weekend, is now in a ‘very critical’ condition with the rat-borne disease and is deteriorating rapidly in hospital.
According to Spanish health minister Javier Padilla, she was deemed symptomless despite suffering with a cough and the flu.
And 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 said.
‘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 French national is the third evacuee from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship who has been confirmed to have the deadly disease after being repatriated.
A Spaniard, who is one of 14 quarantining in a military hospital in Madrid after being evacuated from the ship, provisionally tested positive for the illness on Monday, despite showing no symptoms.
That same day, a symptomless American and the French national both tested positive, as authorities continue to assure the general public that the risk of a major outbreak is low.
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
The Spaniard who tested positive has developed a fever and breathing difficulties, the health ministry said on Tuesday, adding that the patient is stable and has shown no evident clinical deterioration.
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.
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.
After all passengers disembarked from the vessel, it sail for the Netherlands late on Monday evening, with 25 crew as well as a doctor and a nurse, and is expected to arrive on May 17.
Those remaining onboard include 17 people from the Philippines, four from the Netherlands (including the two medical staff), four from Ukraine, one from Russia and one from Poland.
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 four other French nationals repatriated from the cruise 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.
Symptoms can include shortness of breath, fever, extreme fatigue, muscle aches, stomach pain, vomiting, and diarrhoea.
The bus carrying the British passengers and crew being repatriated from the MV Hondius makes its way to Arrowe Park Hospital on May 10, in Birkenhead, England
A passenger of the cruise ship MV Hondius sits with his mask off on a bus on the way to the airport, at the port of Granadilla de Abona, in Tenerife, Spain, May 10
Passengers from the MV Hondius, including one with his mask lowered, wave aboard a military bus after being transferred by boat to the industrial port of Granadilla de Abona on the island of Tenerife
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 18 repatriated Americans tested mildly positive for the lethal Andes strain of hantavirus, the WHO and the 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 highly suspected cases – a Dutch man who died before being tested, and a 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 sick on the cruise is ‘clinically improving but still ill’, 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.
After being evacuated from the vessel in Tenerife at the weekend, 20 British people, one German who lives in the UK, and one Japanese national are due to remain at Arrowe Park Hospital in Merseyside for 72 hours.
There, they will be monitored by doctors and then told whether they can isolate for up to 45 days at home or at another location, in what medics described as ‘a planned, controlled and carefully managed arrangement’.
The Arrowe Park site, close to the village of Upton, was used to house British citizens returning from Wuhan, China, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic six years ago.
Two passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship who have been exposed to the deadly hantavirus outbreak arrive in Atlanta for medical care and assessment
Also being treated in the Netherlands is a 41-year-old Dutch national, who reported symptoms on April 30. A test showed him positive for the Andes strain of the virus on May 6.
He was evacuated to the Netherlands the same day after the ship stopped off Cape Verde and was stable while being treated in isolation.
A Swiss man disembarked from the Hondius in St Helena on April 22 and flew to Switzerland on April 27 via South Africa and Qatar.
He started suffering symptoms on May 1 after arrival in Switzerland. He was treated in isolation and tested positive for the Andes virus on May 5.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has stressed that the general public should not be worried about the outbreak, insisting: ‘This is not another Covid. And the risk to the public is low. So they shouldn’t be scared, and they shouldn’t panic.’
The UN health body is recommending that passengers’ home countries ‘have active monitoring and follow-up, which means daily health checks, either at home or in a specialized facility,’ said Maria van Kerkhove, the organisation’s top epidemiologist.
Numerous countries have said their people will be quarantined or hospitalised for observation.
The cruise set sail from Ushuaia in Argentina on April 1, destined for Cape Verde, and counted 88 passengers and 59 crew members, with 23 nationalities onboard.
The Argentine government’s leading hypothesis is that the Dutch couple who later died contracted the virus during a birdwatching outing at a garbage dump in Ushuaia, a town known as ‘the end of the world’.
The first two cases ‘travelled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a birdwatching trip which included visits to sites where the species of rat known to carry the virus was present,’ WHO said.
Around 40 per cent of hantavirus cases result in death, according to the US Centers for Disease Control.
Eighteen passengers from the cruise ship have been repatriated to the US and are being monitored at specialist medical units.
Sixteen of those people, including one who tested positive, are at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre, and two others are in Atlanta.
All in Nebraska are asymptomatic, while one person in Atlanta is experiencing symptoms, according to health officials.
The positive case was sent to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit upon arrival, while other passengers went to the National Quarantine Unit for assessment and monitoring.
