Three patients with suspected hantavirus infections were being evacuated from a cruise ship to the Netherlands on Wednesday, the UN health agency said, as the vessel at the center of a deadly outbreak remained off Cape Verde with nearly 150 people on board waiting to head to Spain's Canary Islands. AP footage showed health workers in protective gear heading to the MV Hondius for the evacuation that included the ship's Dutch doctor, who Spain's health ministry said had been in "serious condition" but has improved. An air ambulance later departed. Three people have died, and one body remained on the ship, the World Health Organization said. Eight cases have been recorded in all, three of them confirmed by laboratory testing.
Contact tracing has begun on two continents, Europe and Africa, in search of infections around people who earlier left the ship, which departed over a month ago from South America for stops in Antarctica and several remote Atlantic islands. The Dutch foreign ministry said the three evacuated were a 41-year-old Dutch national, a 56-year-old British national, and a 65-year-old German national who would be "immediately transferred to specialized hospitals in Europe." A Dutch hospital confirmed it would take one, and German authorities said they were preparing for a second. Two "remain in a serious condition," Dutch ship operator Oceanwide Expeditions said, and the third had no symptoms but was "closely associated" with a German passenger who died Friday on the MV Hondius ship.
Spanish officials said passengers and crew members still on the ship are without symptoms. Their journey to the Canary Islands will take three or four days, Spain's health ministry said, adding that the arrival "won't represent any risk for the public." Meanwhile, authorities in Switzerland and South Africa said three people had tested positive for the Andes strain of the virus. The WHO says the species of hantavirus is found in South America, primarily in Argentina and Chile, and can spread between people, though that's rare and only through close contact.
The ship is now in the Atlantic off West Africa's island nation of Cape Verde. The WHO said passengers were isolating in their cabins. "At this stage, the overall public health risk remains low," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. Harald Wychgel, a spokesperson for the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, said two doctors were on their way to join the ship. Spain's health ministry said it would receive the ship in the Canary Islands after a request from the WHO and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
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