British health authorities have reported a new suspected case of hantavirus related to the outbreak detected on the cruise ship MV Hondius. The information was released by Reuters, which directly quotes the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the public health body of the United Kingdom.
According to the British agency, the possible affected person is a British citizen located in Tristan da Cunha, a remote British archipelago located in the South Atlantic. For the moment, the authorities speak of a "suspected" case, without definitive official confirmation through laboratory tests.
The new case is added to the surveillance that several countries maintain after the outbreak registered on board the MV Hondius, a Dutch-flagged cruise ship that was traveling through the Atlantic and in which several cases of the Andes variant of hantavirus were detected.
The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to investigate the transmission chain of the outbreak. The main hypothesis the organization is considering is that the first infected passengers contracted the virus before boarding, after a trip through South America, and that secondary transmission may have subsequently occurred on board the ship.
WHO maintains that the risk is low
Despite the appearance of new suspected cases, the WHO continues to insist that the risk to the general population remains low.
The Director-General of the organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, recalled this week that human-to-human transmission of Andes hantavirus is infrequent and that, in previous outbreaks, it has been mainly associated with close and prolonged contact.
On the same line, Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for epidemics at the WHO, stressed that the organization is not treating the situation as a global epidemic alert. “We are talking about an outbreak on a ship, in a confined area,” she explained during a public appearance.
Passenger surveillance and monitoring
British health authorities had already activated tracking protocols on several passengers linked to the cruise ship. British media such as The Guardian reported this week that some citizens were carrying out preventive isolation and symptom monitoring after leaving the vessel.
The concern of health organizations is related to the long incubation period of hantavirus, which can extend for several weeks. The WHO has indicated that more cases related to the outbreak could be detected as epidemiological investigations continue.
Even so, international organizations and experts recall that hantavirus does not present a transmission capacity comparable to that of respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV-2.
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintain that the main route of contagion continues to be exposure to infected rodents or to particles contaminated by saliva, urine, or excrement.