Health officials across four continents were tracking down and monitoring passengers who disembarked the cruise ship before the outbreak was detected.
WASHINGTON — U.S. health officials are closely monitoring American travelers who disembarked the MV Hondius, the cruise ship where a deadly hantavirus outbreak has left three dead and others sickened.
“Our top priority remains the health and safety of all U.S. passengers. The Department of State is leading a coordinated, whole-of-government response including direct contact with passengers, diplomatic coordination, and engagement with domestic and international health authorities,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement. “We are working closely with our international partners to provide technical assistance and guidance to mitigate risk.”
The health agency stressed the risk to the American public is “extremely low” and urged all Americans aboard the ship to follow guidance from local health officials.
State officials have confirmed travelers from Texas, Georgia, Arizona and Virginia that were aboard the cruise ship are being closely monitored. None of the U.S. travelers in those states are showing sign of infection.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the California Department of Public Health was notified by the CDC that some California residents were also on the MV Hondius. However, the agency did not disclose how many residents were being monitored.
Roughly 30 passengers, disembarked the ship on April 24, two weeks after the first passenger died on board and days before the first hantavirus case was confirmed on the ship. The passengers were from at least 12 different countries.
On Wednesday, a man tested positive for hantavirus in Switzerland, after he disembarked at St. Helena.
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 volcanic British territory in the South Atlantic where passengers disembarked, 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.
“While this is a serious incident, WHO assesses the public health risk as low.” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference Thursday. “it’s possible that more cases may be reported.”
Health officials in South Africa are contact tracing April 25 flight
The Dutch health ministry said Thursday that a flight attendant on a plane briefly boarded by an infected cruise passenger in South Africa was showing symptoms of hantavirus and would be tested in an isolation ward at a hospital in Amsterdam. The cruise passenger, also a Dutch woman, was too ill to fly and was taken off the plane in Johannesburg, where she died.
If the woman tests positive, she could be the first known person not on the MV Hondius to become infected in the outbreak.
The vessel is now sailing to Spain’s Canary Islands, where it is expected to arrive on Saturday or Sunday, with more than 140 passengers and crew members still on board.
Authorities in South Africa are also trying to trace contacts of any passengers who previously got off the ship. They have focused mainly on an April 25 flight from St. Helena to Johannesburg, the day after passengers disembarked there.
A French citizen with “benign symptoms” is in isolation and undergoing medical tests, after being identified as a contact case linked to the ship passenger who flew April 25 from St. Helena to Johannesburg and was confirmed to have hantavirus, the French Health Ministry said in a statement Thursday.
The Dutch woman from the cruise ship who later died in South Africa briefly boarded that flight, officials have said. It’s not known how many other cruise passengers also were among the 88 people on it, but flights from St. Helena go to South Africa and are rare, normally once a week.
The body of the third fatality, a German woman, is also still on board the ship after she died on May 2.
How many cases of hantavirus have been confirmed?
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.
Health authorities in Switzerland, Britain, Netherlands, France, Singapore, South Africa and elsewhere are isolating people who previously left the cruise ship and traveled home. They are also tracing people who might have come into contact with cruise ship passengers.
The Associated Press contributed to this report..