French passenger from hantavirus ship tests positive: health minister

A French woman repatriated from a cruise ship struck by hantavirus has tested positive with the rare disease, France’s health minister said Monday, in the country’s first case since the outbreak.

The woman, one of five French passengers flown back from the MV Hondius and placed in isolation in Paris, started to feel very unwell on Sunday night and “tests came back positive”, Health Minister Stephanie Rist told the radio station France Inter.

Twenty-two more French nationals had been identified as contact cases after being exposed to someone with the virus, Rist added.

They included eight people who had travelled on an April 25 flight between Saint Helena and Johannesburg, and 14 more on a flight between Johannesburg and Amsterdam, she said.

Three passengers from the MV Hondius — a Dutch couple and a German woman — have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.

The Dutch woman who died flew from Saint Helena to Johannesburg on April 25, then briefly boarded a flight to Amsterdam the same day but was removed before takeoff.

She died on April 26 in a Johannesburg hospital and later tested positive for hantavirus.

No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is endemic in Argentina, where the ship departed in April.

But health officials have insisted that the risk for global public health is low and played down comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic.