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A female passenger who left the ship this weekend as part of an evacuation operation has been confirmed as a new case of hantavirus, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist told national media.
The two suspected cases identified by the Spanish government have tested negative, the Spanish Ministry of Health has confirmed, Le Monde reports.
The MV Hondius arrived at the Spanish coastal port of Granadilla de Abona in Tenerife on Sunday. From there, the passengers were transferred to their respective countries, where they will undergo medical tests and undergo a period of isolation.
The United States announced on Monday, after the evacuation from the ship, that one passenger is currently experiencing mild symptoms and another passenger tested slightly positive with PCR for the Andes virus.
Javier Padilla, the Spanish Government's Secretary of State for Health, has said that it is important to provide further context around these cases and the information shared by the United States government.
In a television appearance on Monday, Padilla explained that the American passenger had an indeterminate result in a PCR test conducted on board. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control and Spanish epidemiologists considered it negative, while the United States is working with a “lightly positive.”
The situation is similar with the other symptomatic passenger, Padilla said. While Spain and the ECDC considered the symptoms to be inconsistent with hantavirus, the United States is treating it as such for now.
Two planes are expected to depart Spain this afternoon, one to Australia and the other to the Netherlands, carrying the remaining passengers from the ship. Six cases of hantavirus linked to the cruise ship outbreak have now been confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO), which warned that more infections could emerge because the virus can have an incubation period of up to six weeks.
During a press conference, WHO infectious disease epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove tried to distinguish between the outbreak and the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I want to be clear here. This is not SARS-CoV-2. This is not the start of a COVID pandemic. This is an outbreak that we are seeing on a ship," she said.
Van Kerkhove explained that hantavirus does not spread in the same way as coronaviruses, but instead through "close and intimate contact."
Meanwhile, the Albanian Public Health Institute has declared that the hantavirus has a low risk of coming to our country.
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