Rome, Italy. Health ministries in Italy and Spain said 17 people under observation for possible hantavirus infection have tested negative as governments tracked a cruise-ship-linked outbreak.
WHO outlook and outbreak context
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that more cases were expected from a cluster that broke out on a luxury cruise ship during a polar expedition that departed from Argentina, while stressing this was nothing like Covid and was not a pandemic.
Hantavirus is primarily spread by rodents but can be transmitted between people in rare cases, requiring close contact. Incubation can last about six weeks, and crew, passengers and people in contact with them have been quarantined in several European countries.
Three people — a Dutch couple and a German national — have died since the start of the outbreak.
European coordination and quarantine guidance
Some European health ministers were to meet on Wednesday afternoon to share information and better coordinate their response, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist told parliament.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control recommended quarantine for all asymptomatic passengers from the original cruise ship for six weeks, until June 21/22 depending on when they left the boat.
The WHO increased its tally of confirmed cases in the outbreak to nine, with an additional two suspected cases: one person who died before being tested, and one on Tristan da Cunha, a remote South Atlantic island where there were no tests available. So far, all are considered to have been contaminated on the cruise trip or before boarding.
Italy testing and risk assessment
In Italy, tests were conducted on an Argentine tourist hospitalised with pneumonia, a man from the southern region of Calabria who was in voluntary isolation, a British tourist located in Milan and a companion travelling with him. Two of them had come into contact with a Dutch woman who later died from the virus.
All tests came back negative, the Italian health ministry said, adding that the risk connected with the virus remained very low in Europe and therefore also in Italy.
Spain quarantine results and patient status
In Spain, new PCR tests on 13 Spaniards quarantined at a military hospital in Madrid again yielded negative results, health ministry official Javier Padilla told broadcaster TVE. A man who had earlier tested positive had suffered some difficulties breathing overnight but was now stable.
What developments will you be watching for as European health officials coordinate their response to the hantavirus outbreak?
