WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged all countries to monitor passengers who were on the cruise ship.
The World Health Organization opened a meeting of global health ministers on Monday amid concern over deadly hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks and uncertainty over announced US and Argentinian withdrawals. While the rare hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship that has gripped global attention is not officially on the agenda, it is expected to feature prominently in discussions, alongside the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The two outbreaks “are just the latest crises in...
Funding cuts in health research, and the antivaccine movement make it challenging to respond to viruses.
One of four Canadians who returned home from a cruise ship where there was a hantavirus outbreak received a “presumptive positive” test result for the virus, Canadian officials said on Saturday. Results from the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg to confirm the case are expected to come over the weekend, said Bonnie Henry, the public health officer for the province of British Columbia. “Clearly this is not what we hoped for, but it is what we planned for,” Henry said. The person, one member...
The individual is one of four former passengers on the MV Hondius isolating on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
World Health Organization has reiterated that the risk of hantavirus spreading is 'low'.
France’s health minister said on Thursday that 26 people in France identified as close contacts of hantavirus cases linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship had tested negative for the illness. Dutch authorities said that all people who arrived in the Netherlands on evacuation flights from the ship this week have also tested negative. Twenty-six people are in hospital isolation in France, including 22 identified as close contacts of a Dutch woman on the MV Hondius that was at the centre of an...
The woman who was on a virus-hit ship shows "no signs of illness", the government of Pitcairn Islands, a British Overseas Territory, says.
The MV Hondius hantavirus scare revived debates about luxury travel, public health and unequal vulnerability to disease.
Experts say the transmission of hantavirus between humans is so rare that a pandemic is nearly 'impossible'.
The infected man is one of more than 120 passengers and crew members evacuated from MV Hondius, the ministry says.
A Spanish passenger evacuated from the cruise ship at the centre of a hantavirus outbreak has tested positive for the virus, Spain’s health ministry announced on Tuesday as the World Health Organization said it has now confirmed 11 cases, including three people from the cruise who died. The passenger with the new confirmed case of hantavirus was in quarantine in a military hospital in Madrid, where 13 other Spanish nationals evacuated on Sunday – who all tested negative for the virus – also are...
The situation could still change and there might be more confirmed cases, warns the head of the World Health Organization.
US officials say 18 Americans are being monitored for symptoms, as WHO insists risk to public remains low.
The US and France are the latest to confirm hantavirus cases as evacuations from a cruise ship are under way.
One French passenger and one from the US test positive after being evacuated from the vessel in the Canary Islands.
An American national and a French woman evacuated from the cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak have tested positive, officials said Monday, as the complex operation to repatriate those on board continued. The French woman, one of five passengers from France flown back from the MV Hondius and placed in isolation in Paris, started to feel unwell on Sunday night, and “tests came back positive”, said Health Minister Stephanie Rist. Late Sunday, the US health department said one American...
Another one of 17 Americans flown home has mild symptoms, the US health department says.
Hong Kong will serve as a global partner in pandemic preparedness, leveraging its “unrivalled” status as a medical innovation hub to combat emerging health threats such as a recent hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship, the city’s leader and health chief have said. Speaking at the Asia Summit on Global Health on Monday, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu underscored the city’s commitment and strategic role in medical innovation. “Our status as a leading hub for scientific innovation is unrivalled...
British paratroopers landed on a “golf course covered in rocks” to supply medical personnel and oxygen to Britain’s most remote overseas territory as it deals with a suspected hantavirus case, an army commander said on Sunday. The UK Health Security Agency confirmed on Friday that a British national had disembarked from the cruise ship MV Hondius to the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, where they live, with a suspected case of hantavirus. Six paratroopers, a Royal Air Force (RAF)...
The BBC reports from the city of Ushuaia, where experts have been sent to investigate the origins of the outbreak.
Five passengers of the MV Hondius will be quarantined in Paris "until further notice", France's prime minister says.
One of five French people flown back to France on Sunday from the cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak is showing symptoms of the illness, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said. “One of them showed symptoms in the repatriation plane,” he posted on social media. “These five passengers have immediately been placed in strict isolation until further notice. “They are getting medical treatment and will have tests and a medical check-up,” he added. Lecornu also said he would...
The outbreak was reported on the expedition cruise ship MV Hondius, where three deaths have been reported
The specialist team parachuted onto Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory, to treat them.
Malaysia has ramped up health screenings at all international entry points, particularly in the maritime sector, to prevent hantavirus from entering the country, according to Health Minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad. Dzulkefly assured the public that as of Sunday, there have been zero hantavirus cases reported in Malaysia or involving Malaysians, noting that the six lab-confirmed cases recently highlighted were all reported abroad. However, he stressed that the country must remain vigilant against the...
Hantavirus is usually spread by rodents but can in rare cases be transmitted person to person.
A cruise ship hit with a deadly hantavirus outbreak is headed for Spain’s Canary Islands, where most of the nearly 150 people on board will be evacuated and flown home after weeks at sea. The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius is expected to reach waters off Tenerife at dawn on Sunday, where WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is due to help coordinate the ship’s evacuation. Three passengers from the ship – a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman – have died, while others have fallen sick with the...
BBC's Sarah Rainsford reports from the port in Tenerife where the MV Hondius is soon to dock, after a deadly hantavirus outbreak.
Presence of antibodies against the virus in blood samples was reported in the State in 2008 itself and one probable case of the virus-induced ‘hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome’ was reported in 2014. Experts say a good number of ‘leptospirosis-like’ illnesses, wherein patients die within four to five days could be due to hantavirus or a co-infection of leptospirosis and hanta. Symptoms are similar and hard to distinguish without targeted serology tests
US President Donald Trump says a hantavirus cruise ship cluster is ‘under very good control.’
140 passengers and crew on the MV Hondius vessel will be 'completely isolated' and evacuated, say Spanish authorities.
Two Singapore residents who had been on board a hantavirus-hit cruise ship have tested negative to the rare respiratory disease, according to Singapore’s Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA). The two men aged 65 and 67 had been on the MV Hondius and also the same flight as a confirmed hantavirus case from St Helena to Johannesburg on April 25, the CDA said a day earlier. The confirmed case did not travel to the city state and died in South Africa. The CDA’s National Public Health Laboratory...
Some on the Spanish island worry that the imminent arrival of the MV Hondius could pose a health risk.
There is an “almost zero” chance that the Dutch man linked to the hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship contracted the disease in the Argentine port of Ushuaia, a provincial health official said on Friday. Juan Petrina, director of epidemiology for Tierra del Fuego province, where Ushuaia is located, told reporters that his assessment was based on the virus’s incubation period, among other factors. The Dutch man and his wife, both of whom died of the virus, boarded the Hondius in...
Protesters in Tenerife are voicing opposition to the imminent arrival of a cruise ship hit by hantavirus outbreak
Two new suspected cases of hantavirus were reported on Friday, one in Spain and the other on the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, as experts race to contain an outbreak that began on a luxury cruise ship. The announcements in locations thousands of kilometres (miles) apart will fuel concern about a cluster of cases so far associated with three deaths – though the World Health Organization has repeatedly said the risk to the wider public is low and the virus does not transmit...
China’s health authorities have tried to address public concern about the recent hantavirus outbreak by saying there was no cause for concern. The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday that the country had recorded no human infections from the strain of the virus linked to the current outbreak. It is thought to have its origins in the Andes and the CDC said there were no natural hosts for that particular variant in China. “Hantavirus infections generally do not...
About 12 countries have so far been linked to the hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius, as the UN health agency confirms at least five cases.
The risk of a hantavirus outbreak in Asia remains minimal, according to health experts, despite the return of two Singapore residents who were on board a cruise ship where three people died from the disease that triggered a regional panic. Hantaviruses are a family of rat-carried viruses that can infect humans through direct exposure, even though transmission between people is extremely rare. The disease takes its name from South Korea’s Hantan River, where an early strain was identified after...
The patient is on the remote Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, which was visited by the cruise ship in April.