THE HAGUE – Health authorities across four continents Thursday were tracking down and monitoring passengers who disembarked a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship before its deadly outbreak was detected.
At least two of those passengers are Georgia residents, state health officials confirmed to News4JAX on Thursday.
“The individuals are currently in good health and show no signs of infection,” according to the Georgia Department of Public Health. “They are following current recommendations from the CDC.”
Officials are working to trace others who may have come into contact with the passengers since they left the ship.
On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, the ship’s operator and Dutch officials said Thursday.
Three passengers have died in the outbreak — a Dutch couple and a German national — and several others are sick. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
None of the remaining passengers or crew on the ship are currently symptomatic, the Netherlands-based Oceanwide Expeditions cruise ship company said Thursday.
The World Health Organization says the risk to the wider public is low. Hantavirus is usually spread by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and isn’t easily transmitted between people.
“We believe this will be a limited outbreak if the public health measures are implemented and solidarity is shown across all countries,” said Dr. Abdirahman Mahamud, the WHO’s alert and response director.
1st case confirmed May 2
Three people, including the ship’s doctor, were evacuated Wednesday while the ship was near the West African island country of Cape Verde and taken to specialized hospitals in Europe for treatment.
The body of the Dutch man who was the first to die on board on April 11 was taken off the ship on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena on April 24, when his wife also disembarked. She then flew to South Africa a day later and died there.
The ship’s operator said Thursday that a total of 30 passengers — including the deceased Dutch man and his wife — left the vessel at St. Helena. The Dutch Foreign Ministry has put the figure at about 40. The company had not previously said publicly that dozens more people left the ship on April 24.
It wasn’t until May 2 that health authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a passenger on the ship, the WHO says. That was in a British man evacuated from the ship to South Africa three days after the St. Helena stop. He was tested in South Africa and is in intensive care there.
Passengers being monitored
It emerged Wednesday that a man tested positive for hantavirus in Switzerland after he disembarked at St. Helena, though his precise movements in between aren’t clear.
On Thursday, Singaporean health authorities said they were monitoring two men who got off the ship at St. Helena, flew to South Africa and then home. The two men, who arrived in Singapore at different times, were being isolated and tested, officials said.
Authorities in St. Helena, the remote, volcanic British territory in the South Atlantic where passengers got off, said they were monitoring a small number of people who were considered “higher risk contacts.” Those higher risk contacts were being told to isolate for 45 days, the St. Helena government said.
Tests have confirmed that at least five people who were on the ship were infected with a hantavirus found in South America, called the Andes virus. The only hantavirus thought to spread human-to-human, it can cause a severe and often fatal lung disease called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.
Argentina’s health ministry said there were 28 deaths from hantavirus last year, up from an average mortality rate of 15 in the five years before that. Nearly a third of cases last year were fatal, it said.
The ship departed from Argentina and investigations into the outbreak’s source are focusing there.
The Dutch couple that presented the first two cases had traveled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a bird-watching trip before boarding the ship, the WHO said. They visited sites where the species of rat known to carry Andes virus was present.
The WHO is working with health authorities in Argentina to understand their movements and has arranged to ship 2,500 diagnostic kits from Argentina to laboratories in five countries.
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Quell reported from The Hague, Netherlands. Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa. AP writers Jill Lawless in London and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed.