Hantavirus cruise passenger told symptoms were ‘just anxiety’ | News World

Spanish doctors told a girl who tested positive for hantavirus that it was ‘probably just anxiety’.

The French national became sickened with the rare disease after being evacuated from the MV Hondius at Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday.

Yet doctors from the Spanish foreign health service shrugged off her symptoms as as a consequence of stress or anxiety, Spain’s health minister said.

Javier Padilla Bernáldez was quoted by The Guardian as saying: ‘They weren’t pondering that these symptoms were compatible with hantavirus.

‘Why? Because what she was telling [them] was [that she had] an episode of coughing some days ago that had disappeared, and what she was having at that moment was type of like stress or anxiety or nervousness.

‘So it was not catalogued [as hantavirus].’

The World Health Organization said the lady was in ‘very critical’ condition.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control told Metro that health checks on board were conducted by medical doctors on the ship.

A specialist in how diseases spread, called an epidemiologist, is on the ship but didn’t perform clinical examinations of passengers.

Three people have died within the nearly six weeks for the reason that MV Hondius left Argentina for distant islands within the southern Atlantic Ocean.

A minimum of seven other individuals who were on the ship have fallen unwell or tested positive.

WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters this morning that there’s ‘no sign’ that a hantavirus pandemic is on the cards.

But he cautioned that more hantavirus cases are likely, provided that symptoms can sometimes take as much as eight weeks to indicate.

‘While they were still on the ship, even in the event that they were taking some preventive measures…. we’d expect more cases,’ he added.

WHO defines a pandemic as ‘the worldwide spread of a brand new disease’.

What’s hantavirus?

Hantavirus, sometimes called the ‘rat virus’, is a rare family of pathogens carried by rodents – there isn’t a vaccine or cure.

The virus spreads through contact with the faeces, urine and saliva of infected rodents.

Early symptoms might be easily mistaken for the flu, corresponding to fever, chills or body aches, but can escalate to heart or lung failure.

On the centre of the cruise outbreak is the Andes strain, which is endemic to South America, including Argentina, where the ship departed on April 1.

Dr Stathis Giotis, a lecturer in life sciences on the University of Essex, told Metro that the Andes hantavirus is the one known strain that might be spread from human to human, though cases of this are few and much between.

‘It’s clearly a serious situation for those directly affected and it deserves careful public health follow-up, but there isn’t a evidence at present that this represents a broader epidemic threat,’ he said.

Individuals who may get involved with rat droppings, like agricultural staff or people simply cleansing their sheds, are at high risk.

Twelve Dutch hospital staff on the Radboudumc university medical centre have been quarantined over fears they’ve been infected.

The staff didn’t follow strict protocol when taking blood from a hantavirus patient evacuated from the ship, the hospital said yesterday.

Staff also didn’t properly eliminate the patient’s urine – the team can be in quarantine for six weeks.

Cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said yesterday evening that 87 guests and 35 crew have been flown back home thus far.

This includes 20 British holidaymakers now isolating at a Merseyside hospital.

Twenty-seven people, mostly staff or medical professionals, are still on board the ship.

The ship, which is on its solution to Rotterdam within the Netherlands, is currently sailing away from the Canary Islands, in response to tracker MarineTraffic.

Get in contact with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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