A Spaniard traveling on the MV Hondius stated that not all passengers of the cruise ship that had the hantavirus outbreak have been monitored, as 23 disembarked before reaching the Canary Islands and returned to their homes.
Traceability is one of the pillars of the campaign to prevent the disease from spreading, but the worrying data was reported by El País, which published that a Spanish passenger stated that several guests of the MV Hondius disembarked on April 22 on the island of Saint Helena, 10 days after the first death on board, and from there began their return home.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Department of Health reported that there are now 10 cases of hantavirus, after the confirmation of a Spaniard who is admitted to the Gómez Ulla Hospital in Madrid.
Regarding the two suspected cases, one of them, the American citizen who tested “weakly” positive in an initial test in Cape Verde, finally tested negative.
Meanwhile, 12 employees of the Radboudumc university hospital in Nijmegen, Netherlands, were placed in preventive quarantine for six weeks after having been potentially exposed to hantavirus while treating an infected patient from the MV Hondius cruise ship, according to 20 Minutos.
According to the medical center, during the care of a patient who was admitted on Thursday from the Hondius, two incidents occurred related to the handling of biological samples. On the one hand, the blood drawn from the patient was processed following the standard protocol, when due to the nature of the virus it should have been handled under stricter biosafety measures. Likewise, on Saturday it was confirmed that, during the disposal of the patient’s urine, the most recent international standards had not been applied, which also required enhanced procedures.
The MV Hondius cruise ship set sail on Monday heading to the Port of Rotterdam with the crew, where it is expected to arrive on Monday, May 18. The outbreak on board has already caused three deaths.
