The respiratory virus behind a deadly outbreak on a cruise ship is showing no sign of mutating to become more contagious, European health officials said, as a US patient initially treated as a potential hantavirus case has been cleared of infection.
One passenger who had been taken to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit was medically cleared and moved to a quarantine facility, the University of Nebraska Medical Center said in an email Wednesday.
The hantavirus's genome has been sequenced and is similar to strains that caused outbreaks in South America in the past, said Andreas Hoefer, an expert in microbiology and molecular epidemiology with the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. That's likely where the first passenger was infected before boarding the Hondius, the EU's public health agency said.
“At the moment there is no data to suggest this virus is behaving any differently in transmissibility or severity,” Hoefer said Wednesday at a briefing. “All sequences to date are virtually identical.”
Asked whether patients might be contagious before they develop symptoms, Spiteri said the virus could be found in the blood of patients two days earlier. That means “there might be some risk” of an earlier transmission, he said, leading the agency to recommend that contact tracing include people who were exposed to an infected person two days before their symptoms began.
The ECDC, along with the World Health Organization, is working to trace contacts and monitor passengers across many countries as they assess how the virus spread on board and whether additional infections occur.
The outbreak has now been linked to 10 cases, including eight confirmed infections and two probable cases, with three deaths, according to health officials.
American Doctor
Stephen Kornfeld, an oncologist from Bend, Oregon, had initially tested “mildly positive” on a PCR test conducted in the Netherlands after helping care for sick passengers on board the Hondius. He later tested negative twice, Forbes reported, citing Spain's health ministry.
Kornfeld stepped in to provide care after the ship's primary doctor fell ill, he told ABC News. “It just kind of escalated to within 24 hours after I stepped in,” he said. “One of the patients died and the other two, the physician and one of the other staff members, were getting progressively sicker, and then the first news of hantavirus came out.”
Italy on Wednesday said that a 25-year-old man who was placed in isolation had tested negative for hantavirus, easing concerns about transmission on a flight that briefly hosted an infected Dutch woman.
A former Hondius passenger in France is still in intensive care. She has been receiving life support using an artificial lung, a procedure known as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, according to Xavier Lescure, an infectious-disease doctor at Bichat hospital in Paris, where she is being treated.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Essential Business Intelligence, Continuous LIVE TV, Sharp Market Insights, Practical Personal Finance Advice and Latest Stories — On NDTV Profit.