One of the French repatriates from the ship with hantavirus is showing symptoms. All were placed in “strict isolation”
One of the five French people repatriated on Sunday by plane after being evacuated from the cruise ship MV Hondius, where an outbreak of hantavirus was detected, is showing symptoms, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced on X
“He showed symptoms on the repatriation plane,” which landed shortly before 4:30 p.m. local time (5:30 p.m. Romanian time) at Le Bourget airport, north of Paris, the French prime minister said, according to AFP and News.ro.
“These five passengers have been immediately placed in strict isolation until further notice. They are receiving medical care and will undergo examinations and a medical assessment,” added the head of the French government, Sébastien Lecornu, who held a meeting this afternoon in Matignon, in the presence of Health Minister Stéphanie Rist, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez and Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, as well as the representatives of the health authorities.
The French government will also adopt, as early as Sunday evening, a decree to implement isolation measures adapted to these contacts.
A few minutes after landing, the five French repatriates left Le Bourget airport in a convoy of five Samu ambulances to reach the Bichat hospital, according to an AFP photographer present at the scene.
They were to be quarantined for 72 hours, in order to undergo a complete medical evaluation.
“Three days under surveillance, that doesn't worry us at all,” said one of these French passengers, Roland Seitre, just before takeoff. “We have had no cases on board since the end of April and no one is sick,” he continued.
On Sunday morning, the Ministries of Health and Foreign Affairs indicated in a statement that, in the event of the appearance of symptoms in a monitored person, “this will be immediately reclassified as a suspect case” and included in a procedure that provides for “a specialized evaluation, followed by safe care in a reference health facility”.
The first evacuations of the approximately 150 passengers and crew members of the MV Hondius began on Sunday morning in the south of the island of Tenerife, located in the Atlantic Ocean.
Repatriation flights will continue to follow each other in the next few hours, with the destination of the Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Great Britain, Ireland and the United States, with the last flight scheduled for Monday to Australia.
The rare strain
All occupants of the MV Hondius, which departed on April 1 from Ushuaia, Argentina, are considered “high-risk contacts” and will have to be monitored for 42 days, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The WHO recorded six confirmed cases of hantavirus out of eight suspected cases, of which three people died from this known but rare virus, for which there is no vaccine or treatment.
The organization believes that the current situation is not comparable to that at the beginning of the Covid-19 epidemic in 2020, even if the crisis has caused concern worldwide.
Hantavirus is generally transmitted from infected rodents, most often through their urine, excrement and saliva.
But experts have confirmed that the variant of the virus detected on board the ship, the Andes hantavirus, is a rare strain that can be transmitted from person to person, with an incubation period of up to six weeks.
