An American and a French passenger linked to the Hondius cruise ship outbreak tested positive for the Andes strain of hantavirus, a rare respiratory disease, less than a day after leaving the expedition vessel.
The French woman developed symptoms on the repatriation flight from the Canary Islands and worsened overnight, Stephanie Rist, the French health minister, said. She is hospitalised and isolated, as are the other four French passengers.
Governments are taking extensive precautions after a multi-country response to evacuate the Dutch-flagged ship at the centre of an outbreak that has left three people dead.
“It’s a virus we know,” Ms Rist said on Sunday. “The incubation period is quite long and we need to break the potential chain of transmission from the start.”
The passengers will be isolated for 42 days according to rules in the UK, France and the US.
The US update marks the first confirmed US-linked infection tied to the cruise; public health experts say the infection is unlikely to cause a pandemic.
All 17 US citizens who left the ship are being flown to the US via a State Department airlift, with two passengers travelling in biocontainment units “out of an abundance of caution,” the Department of Health and Human Services said on Sunday.
The second symptomatic passenger has not yet been confirmed as having the virus.
The passengers are expected to be taken to a specialised treatment centre in Omaha, Nebraska, for clinical assessment and monitoring, with further care provided as needed.
In the UK, 20 people are isolating at a UK hospital as the captain praised the "patience and kindness" of those on board.
All 20 British nationals from the MV Hondius, together with a German who is a UK resident, and a Japanese passenger, were taken to Arrowe Park Hospital in the Wirral, near Liverpool, on Sunday after the ship docked in Tenerife.
Ninety-four evacuated
Meanwhile, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia announced that a total of 94 passengers and crew members had been evacuated from the stricken cruise ship MV Hondius following the outbreak of the deadly virus.
The minister said people from 19 countries had departed the ship, which was anchored near Tenerife, on eight private aircraft.
Passenger transfer operations are scheduled to continue on Monday, with one aircraft arriving from the Netherlands and another from Australia. The Dutch aircraft will transport six passengers, while the Australian plane will carry 18 affected individuals.
Hantaviruses are a group of viruses usually spread by rodents, but in rare cases, they can be transmitted from person to person. Health authorities have said the risk of the viruses spreading is low.
Eight people no longer on the MV Hondius have fallen ill, according to a World Health Organisation update, with six of them confirmed to have contracted the virus. A Dutch couple and a German national have died.
The Andes strain of hantavirus, identified in the shipboard outbreak, can cause severe lung illness that is fatal in up to 50% of cases, according to the WHO.
The health body said its goal was to finish the ship's evacuation, except for 30 crew members who would remain on board, by 7pm local time on Monday.
Passengers were told to leave their luggage on the ship and were allowed to take only a small bag with essential items such as their phone and passport.
Quarantine Measures
The vigilant government responses reflect the uncertainty that remains around how the virus may have spread on the ship, even as health authorities emphasise that hantavirus is far less transmissible than Covid.
“We don’t want to treat it like Covid,” Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN’s State of the Union. “We don’t want to cause a public panic over this.”
Some experts say the outbreak may challenge assumptions about how the virus spreads. Emerging evidence suggests transmission may not always require prolonged close contact, Ashish Jha, former White House Covid-19 response coordinator, said in a post on X, calling for strict quarantine measures for passengers.
Previous research on Andes hantavirus outbreaks has found transmission occurring in shared settings without direct physical contact, including brief encounters in crowded indoor environments, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
