FRANCE: French Health Minister Stéphanie Rist said on Tuesday that it remains uncertain whether the hantavirus strain involved in the outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship may have mutated, although officials are “rather reassured” about the situation.
Speaking before the National Assembly, Rist said, “There are things … we do not know about this virus. We do not yet have the complete sequencing of the virus, which allows us to say with certainty today, even if we are rather reassured to date … that this virus has not yet mutated.”
The French Health Ministry did not respond to a request for additional comment on the matter.
Hantavirus is mainly transmitted by rodents but can, in rare cases, spread between humans, according to the World Health Organization. It typically begins with flu-like symptoms such as fatigue and fever appearing one to eight weeks after exposure.
A cluster of cases has recently been linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship, which docked in Spain’s Canary Islands after completing a polar expedition that departed from Argentina.
The outbreak has been associated with the Andes strain of hantavirus, with health authorities consulting Argentina, where a similar outbreak involving the same strain ended in 2019.
The WHO has stated that there is no indication of anything unusual about the strain detected on the ship aside from its geographic context.
So far, nine cases have been confirmed, and authorities have urged isolation of suspected cases, warning that more infections could emerge due to passenger interactions before detection. However, officials say there is no evidence of a wider outbreak at this stage.
Meanwhile, Italy’s leading infectious diseases hospital announced on Tuesday that it will examine biological samples from a quarantined man who had contact with a woman who later died of hantavirus.
The ANSA news agency reported that the man, a 25-year-old from Italy’s southern Calabria region, had been hospitalised after exposure linked to travel.
He had briefly been on the same flight as a woman who later died from the virus, who had been removed from a KLM aircraft before departure from Johannesburg.
ANSA initially reported that the man was being transferred to Rome’s Spallanzani Hospital, but the hospital later clarified that it is only awaiting his biological samples for analysis.