By Olivia Le Poidevin and Toby Sterling
GENEVA, May 4 (Reuters) – Medics were working on Monday to evacuate two people with symptoms of the deadly hantavirus after a suspected outbreak on a luxury cruise ship held off West Africa carrying mostly British, American and Spanish passengers, officials said.
Around 150 people were still stuck on the vessel after three people – a Dutch couple and a German national – died, and others fell ill, including a Briton who left the vessel earlier and was being treated in South Africa, authorities added.
“We’re not just headlines: we’re people with families, with lives, with people waiting for us at home,” Jake Rosmarin, a U.S. travel blogger, said in a tearful Instagram video post from the ship on Monday.
‘THERE IS A LOT OF UNCERTAINTY’
“There is a lot of uncertainty and that is the hardest part,” he added.
The World Health Organization said the risk to the wider public was low from the disease that is typically carried by rodents and does not transfer easily between humans.
But authorities in the island nation of Cape Verde said they had not allowed Dutch-flagged MV Hondius to dock as a precaution, with the “aim of protecting national public health”.
The ship’s Netherlands-based operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, said it was “managing a serious medical situation” and looking into whether passengers could be screened and disembarked on the islands of Las Palmas and Tenerife.
It said it was trying to arrange the repatriation of two crew members with symptoms of the disease – one British and one Dutch – along with the body of the German national and a “guest closely associated with the deceased” who is not ill.
The Hondius left Ushuaia in southern Argentina in March, according to company documentation, on a voyage marketed as an Antarctic expedition, with berth prices ranging from 14,000 to 22,000 euros.
It travelled past mainland Antarctica, the Falklands, South Georgia, Nightingale Island, Tristan, St Helena, and Ascension before reaching Cape Verdean waters on May 3.
‘THERE IS NO NEED FOR PANIC’
“The risk to the wider public remains low. There is no need for panic or travel restrictions,” WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said in a statement.
Kluge said the WHO was acting with urgency to support the response to the outbreak and working with the countries involved to support medical care, evacuation, investigations and a public health risk assessment.
“Hantavirus infections are uncommon and usually linked to exposure to infected rodents. While severe in some cases, it is not easily transmitted between people,” Kluge said.
South Africa’s Health Department confirmed two of the dead were Dutch nationals, a 70-year-old man, who died on St. Helena, and later his wife, 69, who died in South Africa after collapsing at OR Tambo International Airport.
A laboratory test has confirmed the presence of hantavirus in the British man being treated in a private clinic in Johannesburg, the department added.
SOURCE UNDER INVESTIGATION
Hantavirus, which can cause fatal respiratory illness, is spread when droppings and urine of rodents become airborne.
There are no specific drugs to treat hantavirus, so treatment focuses on supportive care, including putting patients on ventilators in severe cases.
Hantavirus usually begins with flu-like symptoms, such as fatigue and fever, one to eight weeks after exposure.
A spokesperson for the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health (RIVM), which is assisting, said the source of the infection is not yet clear.
“You could imagine, for example, that rats on board the ship transmitted the virus,” he said.
“But another possibility is that during a stop somewhere in South America, people were infected, for instance via mice, and became ill that way. That all still needs to be investigated.”
(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin Toby Sterling, Olivia Kumwenda, Anthony Deutsch, Stephanie van den Berg, Charlotte Van Campenhout; Editing by Miranda Murray and Andrew Heavens)
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