CAPE VERDE – A hantavirus outbreak has stranded passengers on a luxury cruise ship moored off Cape Verde, with seven confirmed or suspected cases and three deaths reported, as the World Health Organization investigates possible rare human-to-human transmission on board.
The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, carrying mostly British, American, and Spanish passengers, set off from the southern tip of Argentina in late March on an Antarctic nature expedition. Berth prices ranged from 14,000 to 22,000 euros (25,000).
A Dutch couple and a German national have died. A British national was evacuated from the ship and is in intensive care in South Africa. Two crew members require urgent medical care, the ship’s operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, said. Another person on board with a suspected case has only reported a mild fever.
The Dutch foreign ministry said it was preparing the medical evacuation of three people to the Netherlands from the ship currently moored off Cape Verde. The island nation was meant to be its final destination but has not allowed the vessel to put passengers ashore because of the outbreak.
Oceanwide Expeditions said on Tuesday that two specialised medical planes are en route to Cape Verde for the evacuation, adding that it did not have an exact timeline.
It was not yet clear when or where the nearly 150 other people still on board would disembark, though the company said it was in talks with Gran Canaria and Tenerife authorities to moor there. The two Canary Islands are located three days’ sailing away from Cape Verde.
Spain’s health ministry said earlier it saw no need for the ship to make a stop in the Canary Islands if everyone who was sick was evacuated in Cape Verde, unless new cases emerged. The head of the Canary Islands’ regional government said the most sensible course of action was for the ship to return to the Netherlands.
People are usually infected by hantavirus through contact with infected rodents or their urine, droppings, or saliva. The WHO said it had been told there were no rats on board.
However, limited spread among close contacts has been observed in some previous outbreaks with the Andes strain, which spreads in South America, including Argentina, and which the WHO believes could be involved. The Hondius left Ushuaia in southern Argentina in March.
“We do believe that there may be some human-to-human transmission happening among the really close contacts — the husband and wife, people who have shared cabins,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention at the WHO, told reporters in Geneva.
Van Kerkhove said the focus was now to evacuate the two sick passengers still on board and then for the ship to continue to the Canary Islands.
“We have heard from quite a few people on the boat,” Van Kerkhove said earlier. “We just want you to know we are working with the ship’s operators. We are working with the countries where you are from. We hear you, we know that you are scared.”
The first stricken passenger, the Dutch man, died on April 11. His body remained on board until April 24, when it “was disembarked on St Helena, with his wife accompanying the repatriation,” Oceanwide Expeditions said.
His wife, who had gastrointestinal symptoms when she was disembarked, later deteriorated during a flight to Johannesburg. She died upon arrival at the emergency department on April 26, the WHO said, adding that contact tracing was under way for passengers on that flight.
South African authorities have confirmed that the British patient, who is being treated in a Johannesburg hospital, tested positive for hantavirus. The Netherlands has confirmed the virus in the Dutch woman who died.
The WHO said its working assumption was that the initial cases — the Dutch couple, who joined the ship in Argentina after travelling in the country — were infected before joining the cruise. Other cases may also have been infected while on bird-watching trips to islands where birds and rodents live as part of the cruise.
Sources: Reuters
