The rodent-borne virus, which sickened passengers on the MV Hondius, killed three people, led to a race to find its origin and a global health alert, has been declared officially over by the World Health Organisation, reports The New York Times.
Overall, there were 12 confirmed cases and one probable case of hantavirus aboard the cruise ship, including three deaths.
The declaration was made after the final contact of a passenger completed a quarantine period and tested negative for the virus, said the WHO.
The announcement ended a three-month saga that had scientists scrambling to find the origins of a rare vector for hantavirus; crew and passengers held captive on a luxury ship; and global health officials enforcing contact tracing and quarantine protocols.
The luxury cruise liner, MV Hondius, began its trip carrying 175 passengers and crew from nearly two dozen countries as it left Ushuaia, an Argentine city, on 1 April. The first passenger infected by the virus died less than two weeks later.
The last reported case was on 25 May, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO said in making the announcement.
Patient zero was a Dutch man (69), who first showed symptoms on 6 April, five days after the cruise began. He died on board on 11 April. His wife, also 69, became ill after leaving the ship with his body on 24 April on the island of St Helena, where the ship was finally allowed to dock.
She died on 26 April in Johannesburg, where she was going to take a flight home to the Netherlands.
About 30 people from at least 12 countries left the ship in St Helena, a British territory. Two days after the second death linked to the virus, on 28 April, a German woman developed symptoms and died aboard the ship on 2 May.
The next day, after laboratory testing, the WHO confirmed that the hantavirus was on the ship, attributing one of the infections to the virus.
While the ship was moored off the coast of Cape Verde, government and health officials around the world raced to find a way to evacuate the sick passengers. By then, the outbreak had been tied to seven people onboard.
The Government of Spain allowed the ocean liner to dock on 9 May at Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. It was nearly six weeks after the ship had left Argentina, and, during a two-day interval, all remaining passengers were tested and disembarked.
By 11 May, many of the passengers and some crew were either on their way to their home countries, or had already arrived. Many of them were quarantined when they arrived home.
On 18 May, the Hondius arrived in Rotterdam with only 27 passengers and crew placed in a special quarantine area. After the ship was inspected and samples were collected, it was cleaned and disinfected.
Tedros said that more than 650 contacts of people on the ship were identified, and that health officials in about three dozen countries and territories reached out to those contacts.
The WHO said it believed the outbreak originated on land and was not an infestation from the multimillion-dollar ship. The agency identified the strain as the Andes subtype, which can be transmitted between people in close contact.
The Andes subtype caused the deaths of the two first patients who travelled on the ship, the agency said. It is endemic in three provinces across Argentina’s Patagonia, with several cases reported there every year, according to health authorities.
There are no targeted treatments for hantaviruses, which are typically carried by rodents, and no widely available vaccines.
But Tedros expressed optimism that one could arrive. “We are also co-ordinating a study involving 21 countries to understand how the disease develops,” he said, “which will support the development of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for future outbreaks.”
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