Spain confirms 11 hantavirus cases linked to MV Hondius cruise ship outbreak

Get you up to speed: Spain confirms 11 hantavirus cases linked to MV Hondius cruise ship outbreak

Hantavirus patient on artificial lung with ‘severe’ condition | News World

MV Hondius, the cruise ship where the outbreak began last month (Picture: REUTERS)

There are now 11 confirmed hantavirus cases following an outbreak of the potentially fatal disease aboard the doomed MV Hondius.

One of them, a French woman who had travelled on the ship, is now being treated with an artificial lung after she became critically ill with the disease.

She has been admitted to the intensive care unit of Paris’ Bichat Hospital and is receiving treatment for what medical professionals have described as ‘the most severe form of the cardiopulmonary presentation’.

French authorities are also reportedly scrambling to trace anyone who may have been exposed.

Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat Hospital, said: ‘The patient currently has the most severe form of the cardiopulmonary presentation.

A passenger is sprayed with disinfectant by Spanish government officials after disembarking from MV Hondius in preparation for their homeward journey (Picture: AP)

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‘She is on an artificial lung, a blood bypass, to allow, we hope, for her to get through this phase, while the lung attacked by the virus and the damage to the vascular wall can recover.’

The replacement lung has been described as being the ‘final stage of supportive care’.

Three people, including a Dutch couple, have died since the ship’s first passenger began to present with symptoms on April 6.

The ship, which departed from Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1, docked in Saint Helena more than three weeks later, where the body of the first victim – who died on April 11 – was taken aboard and 30 more passengers disembarked.

The first victim’s wife, Mirjam Schilperoord – who was one of them – then travelled by plane to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she died days later of the disease.

After the ship made its way to Tenerife, its remaining passengers were repatriated, including 20 British nationals and two UK residents who were subjected to a 72-hour mandatory quarantine at Arrowe Park Hospital in Merseyside – the same facility that was used to isolate arrivals from Wuhan at the start of the Covid pandemic.

The quarantine period has now ended, and some of the passengers have been released but will continue to isolate at home.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO (Picture: Francesco Militello Mirto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has repeatedly said the risk to the public is low, insisting that the disease will not cause another pandemic like the Covid-19 outbreak which shut down the world in 2020.

However, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, has warned there will likely be more cases of the disease.

‘Of course, the situation could change,’ he told a press conference earlier this week.

‘And given the long incubation period of the virus, it’s possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks.’

WTX previously reported a British man in his 60s, who was meant to be isolating after he travelled on the same plane as Schilperoord, was detained in a bar in Italy.

He and his travelling companion were apprehended in Milan and taken to Sacco Hospital, where they were told they would need to remain until June 6.

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