Nijmegen, Netherlands. Radboudumc hospital has quarantined 12 staff members for six weeks after blood and urine from a hantavirus patient were handled without observing the strictest protocols. The hospital said the infection risk was very low and patient care continued uninterrupted.
Hospital quarantine and protocol concerns
Radboudumc said the preventive quarantining of the medics underscored the challenge of quickly introducing and implementing stricter protocols needed in hospitals and elsewhere for dealing with this strain of hantavirus.
The hospital admitted its hantavirus patient, a passenger from the Hondius luxury cruise ship, on May 7.
Outbreak linked to cruise ship
International medical officials are working to contain the outbreak, which hit the Hondius cruise ship.
The World Health Organization increased its tally of confirmed cases in the outbreak to nine, up by two from the previous day. WHO said more cases could emerge because of the long incubation period, but said this was not a pandemic and was nothing like COVID-19.
Report of a potential case in Italy
Italy’s ANSA news agency reported that a 25-year-old Italian man who had flown on a KLM flight with a woman who died of hantavirus had been taken to hospital with symptoms.
Government response and transmission risk
Dutch Health Minister Sophie Hermans told parliament that strict procedures had been followed, but not the very strictest procedures that apply in cases involving this hantavirus. She said the likelihood that staff were infected was small, but the hospital decided to take precautionary action because it is a serious virus.
Hermans said the situation was different from COVID-19 and that, with the available knowledge and measures being taken, authorities were confident the virus could be kept under control.
The virus can be deadly, although it does not spread easily from person to person.
What steps should hospitals prioritize to ensure the strictest protocols are consistently followed when handling high-risk pathogens?