Two new suspected cases of hantavirus were reported on Friday, one in Spain and the other on the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, as experts race to contain an outbreak that started on a luxury cruise ship.
According to Reuters news agency, the announcements in locations thousands of miles apart will fuel concerns about the spread of a virus that has so far caused three deaths – although the World Health Organization has repeatedly said the risk to the general public is low and the virus is not easily transmitted.
A 32-year-old woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante has symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection and is being tested, Spanish health authorities said.
She was briefly on the plane behind a Dutch woman who had contracted the virus on the MV Hondius, Health Secretary Javier Padilla told reporters.
That Dutch woman left the flight in Johannesburg ill before it took off on April 25 and later died in hospital.
A British man was also suspected of having the disease at Tristan da Cunha, the UK Health Security Agency said. Officials there said he was a passenger on the Dutch-flagged ship that made a stop on the island from April 13 to 15.
“Based on the dynamics of this outbreak, based on how it is spreading and not among the people on the ship, as well as the people who disembarked, we continue to consider the risk to be low for the general population,” Anais Legand, WHO technical officer for viral threats, said in an online briefing.
Both new suspected cases have links to the original cluster of cases, officials said.
FIRST SHIP-BORN CLUSTER OF FALLEN
The cruise left Argentina in March with about 150 passengers, stopping in Antarctica and other locations before heading north to the waters off Cape Verde, where it was briefly held this week after the cases were reported.
WHO officials have confirmed that some cases on the ship are caused by the Andean strain of hantavirus, the only version that can spread between people, usually through prolonged and close contact with a person showing symptoms. – Reuters
