A French woman infected within the deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship is critically ailing and being treated with a synthetic lung, a health care provider on the Paris hospital caring for the sickened passenger said Tuesday. The outbreak has now reached 11 total reported cases, 9 of which have been confirmed.
Three people on the cruise died, including a Dutch couple that health officials consider were the primary exposed to the virus while visiting South America.
The French passenger hospitalized in Paris has a severe type of the disease that has caused life-threatening lung and heart problems, said Dr. Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat Hospital.
He said the girl is on a life-support device that pumps blood through a synthetic lung, providing it with oxygen and returning it to the body. The hope is that the device relieves enough pressure on the lungs and heart to provide them a while to get well. Lescure called it “the ultimate stage of supportive care.”
With the evacuation of all passengers and lots of crew members accomplished, the MV Hondius is now sailing back to the Netherlands, where it’ll be cleaned and disinfected.
The director of the World Health Organization said confirmed and suspected cases have only been reported among the many cruise ship’s passengers or crew.
“For the time being, there isn’t a sign that we’re seeing the beginning of a bigger outbreak,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general. He added: “But in fact the situation could change, and given the long incubation period of the virus, it’s possible we’d see more cases in the approaching weeks.”
The newest person confirmed to be infected is a Spanish passenger who tested positive for hantavirus after being evacuated from the ship, Spain’s health ministry said Tuesday. The passenger was in quarantine at a military hospital in Madrid.
Health authorities say it’s the primary hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship. While there isn’t a cure or vaccine for hantavirus, the WHO says early detection and treatment improves survival rates.
Argentina sending experts to research source of outbreak
Argentina’s health ministry said Tuesday a team of scientific experts will probably be dispatched in the approaching days to research the origin of outbreak.
A Dutch couple, identified by the WHO as the primary cruise passengers infected with hantavirus, spent several months in Argentina and neighboring South American countries before boarding the cruise ship. The husband and wife later died.
Argentine officials have said the couple took a bird-watching tour that included a stop at a garbage dump where they might have been exposed to rodents carrying the infection. The health ministry said its team will investigate the landfill and other locations the couple visited where rats known to hold the virus are found, although local officials within the province where the cruise departed have challenged the speculation it began there.
Evacuation of MV Hondius complete
A complete of 87 passengers and 35 crew were escorted from the ship to shore in Tenerife by personnel in full-body protective gear and respiration masks in a rigorously choreographed effort that ended Monday night.
Two aircraft arrived within the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven overnight carrying Dutch nationals in addition to passengers from Australia and Recent Zealand and crew members from the Philippines. All were placed into quarantine, in line with the Dutch government.
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Some crew stayed aboard the ship and set course for the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, said ship operator Oceanwide Expeditions.
Hantavirus often spreads from rodent droppings and shouldn’t be easily transmitted between people. However the Andes virus detected within the cruise ship outbreak may give you the option to spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms — which might include fever, chills and muscle aches — often show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
WHO chief Tedros has advised that returning passengers should stay in quarantine, either of their homes or in other facilities, for 42 days. He added that WHO cannot implement its guidance, and that different countries may handle the monitoring of passengers without symptoms in alternative ways.
Dutch hospital staff quarantined
Twelve employees at a Dutch hospital where a passenger from the Hondius is being treated need to quarantine for six weeks after improperly handling bodily fluids, Radboud University Medical Center said in an announcement Monday night.
The “risk of infection is low” the hospital said, but it surely was requiring the dozen employees to enter preventive quarantine as a “precaution.”
The hospital within the eastern city of Nijmegen received a passenger last week from one in every of the evacuation flights that landed within the Netherlands and the person has since tested positive for hantavirus.
Blood and urine from the patient must have been handled “in line with a stricter procedure,” the hospital said.
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