Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will accompany Spain’s health and interior ministers to a command post there “to ensure coordination between administrations, health control, and the application of the planned surveillance and response protocols”, the sources said.
Three passengers from the MV Hondius — a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman — have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.
The only hantavirus strain that can transmit from person to person — Andes virus — has been confirmed among those who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.
The Dutch-flagged vessel, which has around 150 people on board, is expected to arrive at the Spanish Canary Island of Tenerife on Sunday. Special flights will then take passengers to their home countries.
There are six confirmed cases of hantavirus so far out of eight suspected ones following an outbreak on a cruise ship, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday.
“As of 8 May, a total of eight cases, including three deaths (case fatality ratio 38%), have been reported. Six cases have been laboratory-confirmed as hantavirus infections, with all identified as Andes virus (ANDV),” it said in a statement.
“WHO assesses the risk to the global population posed by this event as low and will continue to monitor the epidemiological situation and update the risk assessment”.
“The risk for passengers and crew on the ship is considered moderate,” it added.
KLM flight attendant negative
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 April 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.
“This is a pretty unlikely case,” he told reporters: someone “two rows behind the person who died with hantavirus”.
Spanish interior ministry sources said a South African woman who was also on the flight “is currently asymptomatic in South Africa after staying in Barcelona for a week before returning to her country”.