One American tested positive for Hantavirus

A US passenger from the hantavirus-affected MV Hondius cruise ship has tested positive, while another shows mild symptoms, prompting medical evacuation and isolation measures. Authorities across the US and UK have enforced strict monitoring as the outbreak has caused multiple suspected cases and deaths.

Washington: An American passenger from a hantavirus-hit Dutch cruise ship has tested positive for the virus, and another has mild symptoms, the US Department of Health and Human Services have announced.

All 17 American citizens from the MV Hondius cruise ship are currently en route via an airlift to the United States, with the two travelling in the plane’s biocontainment units out of an abundance of caution, the department wrote in a post on the social platform X.

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The airlift will first take passengers to the Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center (RESPTC) at the University of Nebraska Medical Center/Nebraska Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska, before transferring the passenger with mild symptoms to a second RESPTC at their final destination, it said.

“Upon arrival at each facility, each individual will undergo clinical assessment and receive appropriate care and support based on their condition,” the department said in the post. As of Saturday, there were eight suspected cases associated with the outbreak and three deaths, it said.

The incubation period for hantavirus, from first exposure to symptoms, is estimated at one to eight weeks, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, reports Xinhua news agency. The disease is usually spread by rodents but can, in rare cases, move from person to person, and kills more than a third of people infected.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, 20 nationals evacuated from the hantavirus-affected cruise ship MV Hondius were isolated in a northwest England hospital upon their return on Sunday, as authorities stepped up outbreak containment and monitoring. The passengers landed in Manchester earlier in the day before being transferred by bus to Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral, Merseyside, where they will remain under medical observation for 72 hours.

In a joint statement, local National Health Service (NHS) authorities said the group would stay in a “managed setting for clinical assessment and testing.” If they remain symptom-free, they will later be allowed to return home and continue self-isolation for a further 42 days.

The British government said all passengers and crew members returning from the MV Hondius would undergo a total of 45 days of isolation and monitoring. Follow-up work is also underway for individuals who may have been in contact with confirmed or suspected cases.

The emergency measures follow a hantavirus outbreak linked to the MV Hondius, which has resulted in at least eight confirmed or suspected cases and three reported deaths. As part of the broader response to the outbreak, the British government also deployed a specialist military and medical team to Tristan da Cunha, a remote British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic, after a British national on the island tested positive for hantavirus.

According to the British Ministry of Defence, six paratroopers and two military clinicians from 16 Air Assault Brigade parachuted onto the island, while oxygen supplies and medical equipment were air-dropped simultaneously.

Tristan da Cunha, a volcanic island group with a population of 221 people, is regarded as Britain’s most remote inhabited overseas territory. The islands have no airstrip and are normally accessible only by sea. The Defence Ministry described the mission as the first time the British military had deployed medical personnel via parachute to provide humanitarian assistance.

The British government said the risk to the general public remained “very low.”