France reports 22 hospitalized after hantavirus on cruise

According to information from the EFE agency, the ministry reported that this group includes eight French people, some of them children, who traveled with the elderly Dutch woman on April 25 from the island of Saint Helena to Johannesburg, and another 14 who traveled on the same day from the South African city to Amsterdam, on a plane where the woman boarded briefly before being taken to a hospital, where she died the following day.

In testimony before a committee of the French National Assembly this Wednesday, Health Minister Stéphanie Rist said that the decision to hospitalize anyone who had contact with the woman was a “preventive” measure.

She also stated that France, the United Kingdom and Spain will convey a message of “caution” regarding hantavirus in a meeting they will hold this Wednesday with representatives from other European countries.

“We are actively working to try to block this chain of transmission (of hantavirus) at all levels,” said the minister, who added that for now only one positive case has been confirmed in France – a woman who was on the MV Hondius and who is in serious condition, intubated.

The MV Hondius arrived in the Canary Islands, in Spain, on Sunday (10), with more than 90 passengers on board after an outbreak of the virus on the vessel. These people were subjected to health protocols and repatriated to their countries of origin, where they are being observed. Since the reports of the first cases on the cruise, there have been nine confirmed cases and two suspected cases.

The Dutch citizen, her husband and a German passenger who were on the cruise died between April 11 and May 2. In addition to those who arrived in Spain on Sunday, 30 passengers who traveled aboard the ship and who disembarked on the island of Saint Helena in April are being tracked to detect whether additional contagions have occurred.

The origins of the outbreak are still being investigated. One hypothesis is that the Dutch couple contracted the virus while birdwatching in the Argentine city of Ushuaia, where they may have come into contact with rodents with the virus, before boarding the cruise.