Hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship: WHO is looking for the 82 passengers of the flight on which one of the deceased people traveled
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Tuesday that it has begun the process of identifying the more than 80 passengers on board the plane with which a Dutch tourist infected with hantavirus was transferred from the island of Saint Helena to the South African city of Johannesburg, where the patient died in hospital, inform the France Presse and Agerpres agencies.
The 69-year-old Dutch woman, whose 70-year-old husband died on board the cruise ship MV Hondius, had been disembarked on Saint Helena Island on April 24 “with gastrointestinal symptoms”, then boarded a plane the next day bound for Johannesburg, South Africa, the WHO said.
She died a day later, on April 26, and her hantavirus infection could be confirmed on Monday. “Investigations have been launched to find the passengers” of the plane that made that flight, the WHO added in a statement.
It is about a flight operated by the South African company Airlink on April 25, with 82 passengers and six crew members on board, revealed the director of sales and marketing of the Airlink company, Karin Murray.
The WHO suspects “an interhuman transmission between people who came into very close contact”, said the director of the department of prevention and preparedness for epidemics within the organization, Maria Van Kerkhove.
There is only one flight a week between Johannesburg and that isolated island in the South Atlantic, and the flight takes about 4 hours.
South African authorities have asked Airlink to inform passengers on that flight that they will need to contact the Ministry of Health if they haven't already, Karin Murray added.
The MV Hondius, the cruise ship suspected of being a hantavirus outbreak, would leave the Cape Verde archipelago in the coming hours, after the medical evacuation of two crew members, who are sick, as well as a passenger, considered a case of close contact with a patient who died on May 2.
The operator of the cruise ship, Oceanwide Expeditions, announced on Tuesday evening that the three people will be medically evacuated on two planes to the Netherlands.
After their evacuation, the Dutch company specified that the vessel MV Hondius will be able to leave off the coast of the Republic of Cape Verde and head for Gran Canaria or Tenerife, in the Canary Islands (Spain), “which will require three days of navigation”.
MV Hondius left on its journey from Ushuaia, Argentina, to the Cape Verde archipelago, with 88 passengers and 59 crew members of 23 nationalities on board.
The WHO announced on Sunday three deaths on that ship – a Dutch couple and a German tourist – associated with a possible outbreak of hantavirus infection, which can cause acute respiratory symptoms.
