France and Netherlands say all hantavirus contact cases negative

France’s health minister said on Thursday that 26 people in France identified as close contacts of hantavirus cases linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship had tested negative for the illness.

Dutch authorities said that all people who arrived in the Netherlands on evacuation flights from the ship this week have also tested negative.

Twenty-six people are in hospital isolation in France, including 22 identified as close contacts of a Dutch woman on the MV Hondius that was at the centre of an international alert for the rare disease typically transmitted by rodents.

French doctors are monitoring four others who were on the ship, while a fifth French passenger tested positive for hantavirus and is in serious condition in a French hospital.

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“As of today, all close contacts of a person who tested positive for hantavirus, present in France, have tested negative, without exception,” said Health Minister Stephanie Rist on X.

Twenty-two of the individuals in France were on a flight from the Atlantic island of Saint Helena to Johannesburg, or on a Johannesburg-Amsterdam flight that a Dutch passenger was to have taken. The Dutch woman was taken off the flight and died in a South African hospital.

The 26 individuals will be tested three times a week as a precautionary measure, Rist said.

Globally, three people from the Hondius have died, six are confirmed to have hantavirus, there is one probable case and one US passenger had symptoms but recorded a negative test, according to a count from official figures.

Health authorities have said there is a low risk to the wider public.

Meanwhile, the European Union said it would step up the exchange of information between its 27 member states to better combat hantavirus. France on Tuesday called for “closer coordination” on EU health protocols.

US patient with hantavirus symptoms tests negative

US health officials said on Wednesday a patient who had exhibited mild hantavirus symptoms and is in a biocontainment unit in the state of Georgia had tested negative for the rare illness.

That patient is one of 18 being monitored in US medical facilities after they were evacuated from the cruise ship MV Hondius, the focal point of the hantavirus outbreak.

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During a Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) press briefing, authorities also clarified that a different patient whom officials had said tested “mildly positive” for hantavirus was awaiting results from an additional test.

“The initial test that we received was from abroad, and it was inconclusive in its results, and so we’re in the process of testing,” said David Fitter, the CDC incident manager for the hantavirus response. He added that results are expected in approximately one day.

That patient is at a biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre, which has specialised facilities for people potentially exposed to high-consequence infectious diseases.

There are 15 more asymptomatic people in a quarantine unit at that facility.

The mildly symptomatic patient in Georgia’s Emory Hospital who tested negative for the virus’s Andes variant would meanwhile continue to be monitored by health professionals, he said, along with the individual’s asymptomatic partner.

Several US states are tracking others who had previously disembarked from the cruise ship or had been potentially exposed.