The Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands later announced another patient had tested positive.
But the WHO’s emergency alert and response director Abdi Rahman Mahamud insisted: “We believe this will be a limited outbreak if the public health measures are implemented and solidarity shown across all countries.”
People thought to have contracted the virus are being treated or isolating in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and South Africa.
Rare disease
Hantavirus is a rare respiratory disease that is usually spread from infected rodents and can cause respiratory and cardiac distress as well as haemorrhagic fevers. There are no vaccines and no known cure for it.
A passenger is thought to have contracted the virus before boarding the ship in Argentina and eventually infected others on board as it sailed across the Atlantic.
Three evacuees were whisked away from the ship on when it anchored off Cape Verde this week and a fourth landed in Amsterdam, said the vessel’s operator, Netherlands-based Oceanwide Expeditions.
“No symptomatic individuals are present on board” the ship at the moment, as it sails toward the Spanish island of Tenerife, Oceanwide Expeditions said in a statement.
The ship is scheduled to arrive there on Sunday and those on board evacuated.
Oceanwide Expeditions said there were 149 people on the ship, including 88 passengers.
Officials in Argentina said they planned to test rodents in the coastal city of Ushuaia, from where the ship had set sail on April 1.
Experts say the Andes strain of hantavirus – thought to be the strain aboard the cruise ship – may be spread through kissing, sharing drinks or coughs and sneezes.
A laboratory study published in The Lancet by Chilean scientists suggested that infectious particles are present in the saliva, urine and mucus of those struck down by the Andes virus, particularly during the peak symptomatic phase.
Professor Marcela Ferres, who led the research, said previous outbreaks had been associated with sharing straws, adding: “It is present in saliva and the space around the teeth. Kisses have been associated with transmission in couples.”
However, experts said the risk of human transmission was still very low for people who were not in close contact with an infected person.
The latest outbreak suggests that people in close proximity, such as cruise or plane passengers, can transmit the virus but it probably only occurs when people are noticeably sick.
Two people who returned to the UK from the ship have been advised to self-isolate, the UK Health Security Agency said, adding they were asymptomatic and insisting the risk to the public was “very low”.
First case
A Dutch man who had boarded in Ushuaia with his wife died aboard the ship on April 11.
The man’s body was taken off the ship on April 24 in Saint Helena, an island in the south Atlantic where 29 other passengers disembarked, the ship’s operator said.
It said it was working to trace all passengers and crew who got on or off the ship since March 20.
Ghebreyesus said the WHO had informed 12 countries that its nationals disembarked from the cruise ship on Saint Helena.
The deceased man’s wife – who left the ship to accompany his body to South Africa – died there 15 days later after also falling ill, with hantavirus confirmed as the cause on May 4.
The couple had visited Chile, Uruguay and Argentina before the cruise, Argentine officials said.
Chile’s health ministry said the two passengers who died were not infected in that country as they travelled there at “a period that does not correspond to the incubation time”.
The WHO says the incubation period for hantavirus can be up to six weeks.
The Dutch woman had flown on a commercial plane from the island of Saint Helena to Johannesburg while she was showing symptoms.
Officials were trying to trace people on that flight, which South African-based carrier Airlink said was carrying 82 passengers and six crew.
A German passenger died on May 2. Her body remains on the ship.
- AFP
