TRACKING AND TRACING
In Madrid, Spain’s health and interior ministers insisted there would be “no contact” with the local population, and that passengers would leave “by nationality groups”.
“All areas (the passengers) pass through will be sealed off,” the interior minister said, adding a maritime exclusion zone would be in force around the vessel.
The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina on Apr 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.
Provincial health official Juan Petrina said there was an “almost zero chance” the Dutch man linked to the outbreak contracted the disease in Ushuaia based on the virus’s incubation period, among other factors.
Health authorities in several countries have been tracking passengers who had already disembarked and anyone who may have come into contact with them.
A flight attendant on the Dutch airline KLM, who came into contact with an infected passenger from the cruise ship and later showed mild symptoms, tested negative for hantavirus, the WHO said Friday.
The passenger – the wife of the first person to die in the outbreak – had briefly been on a plane bound from Johannesburg to the Netherlands on Apr 25, but was removed before take-off.
She died the following day in a Johannesburg hospital.
Spanish authorities said a woman on that flight was being tested for hantavirus, having developed symptoms at home in eastern Spain. She is in isolation in hospital, said health secretary Javier Padilla.
Two Singapore residents who had been on the ship tested negative for the disease but would remain in quarantine, authorities said Friday.
British health authorities also said Friday there was a suspected case on Tristan da Cunha, one of the world’s most isolated settlements with around 220 people.