GENEVA: The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that the risk to the general public from a deadly hantavirus strain linked to a cruise ship outbreak is minimal, noting that the virus spreads only through “very close contact.”
An outbreak aboard the MV Hondius, which is en route to the Spanish island of Tenerife, has prompted international concern.
Three passengers from the vessel have died. The WHO said on Thursday that there are currently five confirmed cases and three suspected cases linked to the outbreak.
“This is a dangerous virus, but only to the person who’s really infected, and the risk to the general population remains absolutely low,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a press briefing in Geneva.
“This is not a new Covid… It’s not anything close to measles,” he said, insisting that with hantavirus, it did not appear to be enough to be relatively near someone coughing to get infected.
“You have to be basically in your face… If you share saliva, (and) spitting would also be a problem,” he said.
Lindmeier also noted the confirmation on Friday that a Dutch flight attendant who reportedly had close contact with a sick cruise passenger, who later died, had tested negative for the virus.
KLM said on Wednesday that the passenger — the wife of the first person to die in the hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius — briefly boarded a flight from Johannesburg to the Netherlands on 25 April but was removed before take-off.
The Dutch woman died on 26 April in a Johannesburg hospital and was later confirmed to have tested positive for hantavirus.
Lindmeier said the flight attendant had been in close contact with the woman, who later collapsed and died in Johannesburg, but had not been infected with hantavirus, describing the result as “very good news.”
“That shows you again, luckily, that apparently the virus is not that contagious that it easily jumps from person to person,” he said.
