One U.S. citizen and one French national who were on board the cruise ship at the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak have tested positive for the virus.
Dozens of passengers, including 17 American citizens, were evacuated from the MV Hondius on Sunday after it docked off the coast of Tenerife, one of Spain's Canary Islands.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Sunday night that one U.S. passenger had tested mildly positive for the virus and another had mild symptoms.
All American citizens are initially being airlifted to a treatment center at the University of Nebraska, the HHS said. The individual with mild symptoms will be transported to a second facility.
On Monday, a French passenger tested positive for the virus. French Health Minister Stéphanie Rist said her condition was deteriorating.
In its latest update on Monday, the World Health Organization said seven cases had been confirmed among passengers on board the ship, including the French case, according to Reuters. Two more cases are suspected to be hantavirus. So far, three people have died: a Dutch couple and a German national.
A dozen countries, including the U.S., were also scrambling to track down and monitor passengers who disembarked on April 24 on the island of St. Helena, a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic, without contact tracing.
Health officials in Arizona, California, Georgia, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia are monitoring residents for potential infections linked to the cruise ship. None of the states have reported any cases.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, has previously said the first two cases — a Dutch couple — had traveled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a bird-watching trip "which included visits to sites where the species of rat known to carry the virus was present," according to the BBC. The WHO has stressed that the risk of a wider outbreak remains “absolutely low.”
