Hantavirus: American CDC says risk to public ‘very low’
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The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) said it was closely monitoring American passengers aboard the MV Hondius but added that the hantavirus outbreak posed a “very low” risk to the wider public.
“Our CDC team began coordinating with domestic and international partners as soon as we were notified of a hantavirus situation,” CDC director Dr Jay Bhattacharya said.
“We understand that people are concerned and looking for information and that is why we provided clear, written health guidance to the American passengers through the State Department. The safety and health of the affected American travelers is our number one goal.”
The New York Times reported that residents in three states were being monitored for hantavirus, although none had shown any signs of illness.
“Hantavirus is not spread by people without symptoms, transmission requires close contact, and the risk to the American public is very low,” the CDC statement said.
The luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak and marooned since Sunday off the coast of Cape Verde left for Spain on Wednesday, a Reuters witness said, after three people, two of them seriously ill, were evacuated.
The MV Hondius, with nearly 150 people on board, is expected to dock in Spain’s Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, within three days, Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia said, adding that those still on board were not presenting any symptoms of the disease.
Once in Tenerife, if they are still healthy, all non-Spanish citizens will be repatriated to their countries, Garcia told a press conference in Madrid.
The 14 Spanish passengers will be quarantined in a military hospital in Madrid, she said. The duration of the quarantine will depend on when they potentially had contact with the virus, she said, adding that it has a 45-day incubation period.
Three people – a Dutch couple and a German national – have died in the outbreak.
A total of eight people – including a Swiss citizen who has returned home and is being treated in Zurich – are suspected to have contracted the virus, with three of them confirmed by laboratory testing, the World Health Organisation said.
Argentina’s health ministry will carry out rodent trapping and analysis in the southern city of Ushuaia, the origin point of the cruise ship hit by the outbreak, it said in a statement.
Officials are reconstructing the itinerary of the Dutch citizens who travelled in Argentina and Chile and later presented symptoms of hantavirus on the cruise, the statement said.
