12 Dutch hospital employees quarantined due to hantavirus

A Dutch hospital has quarantined 12 staff members as a precautionary measure after blood and urine from a patient infected with hantavirus were processed without following strict protocols.

Twelve employees will be quarantined for six weeks, Radboud University Medical Center announced. (Radboudumc) in the city of Nijmegen, adding that the risk of infection is very low and that patient care continues without interruption, Reuters reports.

The agency says the quarantine of medical staff demonstrates how challenging it is to quickly implement and enforce the stricter protocols needed in hospitals and elsewhere to deal with this strain of hantavirus.

International health officials are working to contain the outbreak, which broke out on the luxury cruise ship Hondius.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has increased the number of confirmed cases in the outbreak to nine, two more than the previous day. It said there could be more cases due to the long incubation period, but that it is not a pandemic and cannot be compared to Covid-19.

In the latest report on a possible case, Italian news agency ANSA reported that a 25-year-old Italian man, who flew on a KLM flight with a woman who died from hantavirus, was taken to hospital with symptoms.

The virus can be deadly, although it is not easily transmitted from person to person.

On May 7, Radboudumc Hospital received a patient infected with hantavirus, a cruise ship passenger.

“What happened was that strict procedures were followed, but not the strictest procedures that apply in cases involving this hantavirus,” Dutch Health Minister Sophie Hermans told parliament. “The probability that the staff was infected as a result is small, but since we know we are dealing with a serious virus, the hospital said: we will play it safe here.”

"This is a really different situation than with Covid. With the knowledge we have and the measures we are taking, we are confident that we can keep this virus under control," said Hermans.

After the last passengers disembarked in Spain's Canary Islands, the Hondius set sail for the Netherlands late Monday night with 25 crew members, a doctor and a nurse. It is expected to arrive in the Netherlands by May 17, the ship's owner, Oceanwide Expeditions, said.

Two planes carrying 28 passengers and crew who disembarked from a ship in the Canary Islands arrived in the Netherlands shortly after midnight on Tuesday. Eight of them are Dutch citizens, while the rest will continue their journey to their home countries, authorities said.

Three people - a Dutch couple and a German citizen - have died since the start of the outbreak of the virus, which is usually spread through wild rodents but can be transmitted from person to person in rare cases of close contact.

In addition to the nine confirmed cases, the WHO also acknowledges two suspected cases - one person who died before being tested, and one on Tristan da Cunha, a remote island in the South Atlantic where tests were not available.

All suspected cases have been isolated and treated under strict medical supervision, minimizing the risk of further transmission, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference in Madrid.

Tedros warned that more cases were expected, as there was "a lot of interaction" among the travelers before health officials detected hantavirus in the patient who fell ill.

"At this point, there are no signs that we are witnessing the beginning of a major epidemic, but the situation can, of course, change and, given the long incubation period of the virus, it is possible that we will see more cases in the coming weeks."

All passengers who disembarked the ship in earlier stages of the cruise have been located, Tedros said, adding that it was up to their countries to implement protocols to prevent the spread of the virus.

Spain announced late Monday that one of its citizens had tested positive, one of 14 people quarantined at a military hospital in Madrid. The patient has a fever and is having difficulty breathing but is stable, the Spanish Health Ministry said today, adding that final tests confirmed negative results for the remaining 13 people in quarantine.

Among the confirmed cases is a French passenger who tested positive after the ship docked in the Canary Islands on Sunday. French Prime Minister Sebastien Le Corneille said the passenger was in intensive care but in stable condition.

Officials from the US Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday that 18 passengers from the Hondius were flown back to the US and quarantined, while one passenger, who tested weakly positive, is now in a biocontainment unit in Nebraska.