Romania’s interim health minister, Cseke Attila, said on Thursday, May 7, that there are no reasons for concern in Romania regarding a possible hantavirus outbreak, given the cases reported aboard a cruise ship sailing in the Atlantic Ocean.
Health specialists in Romania have obtained the necessary information regarding the outbreak, the minister said, cited by G4Media.
Moreover, the virus is not novel. Some 15 hantavirus infection cases were recorded between 2023 and 2026 in Romania, of which one this year, the National Institute of Public Health informed.
The hantavirus outbreak on the Dutch vessel MV Hondius has made global news due to fears of a new global pandemic. Five of the eight suspected hantavirus cases had been confirmed on the ship.
Hantavirus is usually transmitted from rodents, but human-to-human transmission was documented for the first time during the cruise ship outbreak.
Three people died as a result of the outbreak so far, including a 69-year-old Dutch woman. Her Dutch husband and a woman from Germany also died.
However, health officials at the World Health Organization said that the incident is not comparable to that from six years ago caused by Covid-19, because hantavirus is transmitted through close and intimate contact.
“This is not Covid, it is not influenza, it is transmitted very, very differently,” said Maria van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the World Health Organization, during a May 7 press conference cited by the BBC.
At the same event, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus stated that the first two people with confirmed infections “had traveled through Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay on a birdwatching excursion, which included visits to areas where the rat species known to carry the virus was present.” Given the incubation period of the disease, which can reach up to six weeks, it is possible that additional cases may also be reported, he said.
The luxury cruise, operated by the company Oceanwide Expeditions, began on April 1 in Ushuaia, Argentina, and is scheduled to arrive on May 10 in the Canary Islands, Spain. Approximately 150 passengers and crew members from 28 countries were initially aboard the ship, but dozens of people disembarked on Saint Helena Island, a British territory, on April 24. Tracking is still ongoing.
(Photo source: Nisha Dutta|Dreamstime.com)
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