Dozens of people are being monitored for hantavirus tied to the deadly outbreak on board the cruise ship MV Hondius.
The case total has climbed to 11, the BBC reported Sunday, after a Canadian passenger from the ship tested presumptive positive for the virus. Three people who traveled on the ship have died, two of them confirmed to have had hantavirus.
British Columbia’s senior health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, said the patient – a Yukon resident isolating on Vancouver Island after returning from the cruise – developed mild symptoms and tested presumptive positive Friday, pending confirmation from Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory. “Clearly, this is not what we hoped for, but it is what we planned for,” Henry said, according to CBC. Six Canadians traveled on the MV Hondius; none of the other five have tested positive.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the risk to the global population remains low.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that at least 41 people in the United States are being monitored for potential exposure linked to the MV Hondius, including 18 passengers currently in the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. The two most recent arrivals had been at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and were transferred to Nebraska on Friday after being medically cleared. One of them had been admitted to Emory’s biocontainment unit with mild symptoms but tested negative; the other was a close contact who was asymptomatic.
Health officials in at least 10 states – Arizona, California, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia and Washington – are monitoring residents for potential infections linked to the cruise ship.
But as of Sunday morning, there were no known cases of hantavirus linked to the MV Hondius in the U.S.
Separately, New York State health officials are investigating a hantavirus case at Geneva High School in Ontario County – suspected to have been locally acquired and not connected to the cruise ship – that the Geneva City School District confirmed Thursday.
In Colorado, the state health department said Saturday that a Douglas County adult had died of hantavirus in a case that is also not linked to the cruise ship. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said preliminary evidence points to local exposure to rodents, and that the strain involved – Sin Nombre – does not spread person-to-person.
