Spain is preparing to receive more than 140 passengers and crew members from a cruise ship on which at least eight people became ill and three died due to hantavirus.
The Dutch-flagged vessel, the MV Hondius, was sailing from Argentina to Cape Verde when the outbreak was discovered. The ship is now heading for Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands, off the coast of West Africa, according to media reports.
Passengers will be taken to a “completely isolated, cordoned-off area,” the head of Spain’s emergency services, Virginia Barcones, told the Associated Press.
Public health staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will meet the cruise ship in Tenerife and escort American passengers back to the United States aboard a charter flight, CNN reports.
Additional CDC staff will meet cruise ship passengers in Nebraska, where passengers will be quarantined in an effort to control the virus, according to CNN. Nebraska is home to the National Quarantine Unit, a federally funded quarantine facility, as well as the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.
Hantavirus infections, which can cause respiratory symptoms, are rare and usually spread through contact with the urine, feces, or saliva of infected rodents, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This outbreak is caused by the Andes virus, the only known hantavirus strain to spread from person to person, primarily through prolonged, close contact.
British nationals test positive for hantavirus
British health officials announced today that two British nationals who were on the ship have confirmed hantavirus. An additional British national on Tristan da Cunha, a remote group of British islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, has a suspected case.
Although the United States and Argentina left the WHO earlier this year, both countries are cooperating with international efforts to contain the outbreak, according to STAT.
The CDC has fewer staff to respond to the outbreak due to massive staffing cuts over the past year. The top US official responsible for public health on cruise ships has recently retired, according to an internal memo obtained by STAT.
Experts in infectious disease and public health have criticized the CDC’s relative silence on the outbreak, arguing that the US response so far suggests the country is ill-prepared to handle another major health crisis.
Although a flight attendant who worked on a KLM flight that carried a female cruise ship passenger who subsequently died of hantavirus has been hospitalized, the flight attendant has tested negative for the virus, according to Inside Medicine.
