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A French woman evacuated from the expedition cruise ship MV Hondius tested positive for hantavirus, and her health worsened overnight in the hospital, as confirmed on Monday by French Health Minister Stéphanie Rist, according to information from the Associated Press.
The patient was one of five French passengers repatriated from Tenerife to Paris after the ship disembarked on Sunday at the industrial port of Granadilla de Abona, in the southeast of the Canary Island. One of those passengers had already developed symptoms during the flight back to the French capital.
The MV Hondius, operated by the Dutch company Oceanwide Expeditions, set sail from Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1 for a 46-day itinerary to Antarctica, the South Atlantic Islands, and Cape Verde, with 88 passengers and 59 crew members from 23 nationalities on board.
The outbreak has already caused at least three deaths both on board and on land: a Dutch couple —the husband died on board on April 11 and his wife passed away in a hospital in Johannesburg on April 26— and a German woman who died on board on May 2.
As of May 8, the World Health Organization reported six confirmed cases by PCR and two suspected cases. This is the first documented hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship according to the international organization.
The identified virus is the Andes strain, the only one among more than 20 known strains with documented transmission between humans, although it requires very close and prolonged contact. Transmission on board is suspected to have occurred primarily among couples sharing a cabin.
Cabo Verde rejected the docking of the ship to protect its population, which led to Spain authorizing the disembarkation in Tenerife after intense diplomatic negotiations. The 14 Spanish passengers were the first to disembark, transferred by the Military Emergency Unit to Tenerife South Airport and then by military plane to Gómez Ulla Hospital in Madrid, where they are undergoing a minimum quarantine of seven days.
A general quarantine for all passengers has been established since May 6, extendable up to 42 days, in line with the incubation period of the Andes virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States deployed epidemiologists to the Canary Islands and planned to repatriate 17 American passengers to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, for their quarantine at the National Quarantine Center of the University of Nebraska.
Last Friday, the Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, published an open letter to the residents of Tenerife to ease the fears of the population: "This is not another COVID-19. The risk of community transmission is very low."
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