French woman was told by doctors hantavirus symptoms were just anxiety | Hantavirus

A French woman who tested positive for hantavirus after being evacuated from a cruise ship reported symptoms to doctors on board but was told it was probably just anxiety, Spain’s health minister said.

Javier Padilla told the Guardian that the woman, who was traveling on the ship at the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak, was suffering from flu-like symptoms, but they appeared to be improving and she did not have a fever. The World Health Organization later said the woman was in “very critical” condition.

Padilla’s comments came as the MV Hondius left the dock on the Canary island of Tenerife on Monday evening, after repatriating 120 people from 23 countries in 48 hours in an operation described by Spanish authorities as “complex” and “unprecedented”. Around 30 people – the crew and two health workers – remained on board the ship as it headed towards Rotterdam.

Despite the deaths of three people who were on the ship and eight other confirmed cases, doctors from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and Spain’s foreign health services assessed the French woman and classified her symptoms as anxiety or stress, Padilla said.

“They didn’t think these symptoms were consistent with hantavirus. Why? Because what she was saying [them] was [that she had] a coughing episode a few days ago that had gone away, and what she was feeling at that time was a bit like stress, anxiety, or nervousness. So it was not cataloged [as hantavirus]” Padilla said.

Speaking as the ship left Tenerife, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, thanked Spain for coming to the aid of those on board the ship.

He said the French passenger was now “in a very critical situation”.

“Imagine if she stayed on the ship longer,” he said.

He said there was “nothing to fear” for people in countries welcoming passengers, adding that he hoped they would show “compassion and solidarity with your citizens”.

The Frenchwoman was one of five French passengers who disembarked from the MV Hondius in Tenerife on Sunday before being flown to a hospital in Paris.

French Health Minister Stéphanie Rist said the woman started feeling very unwell on Sunday evening and “the tests came back positive.” Rist told France Inter radio: “Unfortunately, his symptoms got worse overnight. » She is being treated in a unit specializing in infectious diseases at a Paris hospital.

On Sunday, staff wearing full protective gear and respiratory masks began escorting travelers from the ship to shore in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands.

The WHO and the Spanish government reassured the public on Saturday evening that all 149 passengers and crew were asymptomatic of the infection, which causes flu-like symptoms and can lead to respiratory failure.

Padilla defended this approach saying there would likely be cases without serious symptoms and that is why all passengers and crew were recommended to self-isolate for 45 days since their last exposure, which was agreed to be May 6.

In Spain, those evacuated from the ship were taken to a military hospital, while 22 Britons, one German and one Japanese were taken to Arrowe Park Hospital in Merseyside for quarantine and testing.

Each of the 23 countries of origin of passengers and crew is responsible for deciding on its own measures.

“I think you can’t say that you landed them and now they’re propagating the situation,” Padilla said.

“What happened in France, I think is a case of good practice in public health management of an epidemiological alert, because if we thought it was not possible that no one could develop a disease, we would not quarantine people.”

He said the woman’s condition deteriorated between the ship and the plane. “It wasn’t that the patient felt bad and she was like, ‘OK, I’m not going to say anything because I want to be on the plane.’ It was like, ‘OK, we took your temperature, it wasn’t a fever, then you got on the plane, it took off, you started feeling bad, we took your temperature and it was a fever.'”

A U.S. passenger who was flown to Nebraska with 16 others on Sunday evening also tested positive but had no symptoms. The US Department of Health said one US national evacuated from the ship tested positive for the Andes strain – the only strain of hantavirus transmissible between humans – and another had “mild symptoms”. The WHO and the Spanish government said the positive results were not strong enough to be conclusive and did not take the U.S. case into account in the official figures.

Padilla said passengers could not have been tested on board the ship because there were no rapid PCR tests for hantavirus available. Any testing would have required samples to be sent to Madrid to a specialized laboratory, a process that would have taken 24 hours. The delays would have made it impossible to rescue those on board due to extremely strong winds forecast from Monday evening, which were expected to be “hell” on Tuesday, he said.

These strong winds forced the ship to dock Monday afternoon for safety reasons. The Spanish government had insisted this would not happen, after Canary Islands President Fernando Clavijo argued that docking the ship increased the possibility of hantavirus-carrying rats spreading onto land, putting the local population at risk.

The cause of the outbreak on the ship is not yet known, but it is believed to have spread from person to person and was brought aboard the ship after a birding trip to Argentina by a Dutch husband and wife who became the first fatalities.

A spokesperson for Clavijo told the Guardian on Monday evening that the president did not believe enough precautions had been taken to stop the spread of the virus but that he hoped “all ends well for passengers and operators”.

There is no vaccine or specific treatment against hantavirus, endemic in Argentina, where the ship left in April. But health officials have said the risk to global public health is low and downplayed comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Health authorities in several countries are monitoring passengers who have already left the ship, as well as anyone who may have come into contact with them.

A flight scheduled to bring passengers back to Australia was canceled due to timing issues. The six passengers who were due to travel on board – four Australians, a Briton resident in Australia and a New Zealand national – will return home via one of the Dutch flights.

The ship will then leave for the Netherlands with the 26 crew members on Monday evening.