The World Health Organization on Thursday declared an end to the deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship which sparked international alarm, after the last person left quarantine.<\/p>\n
There were 12 confirmed and one probable case stemming from the MV Hondius, including three deaths.<\/p>\n
But while the outbreak is now over, for\u00a0scientists and experts, the work is only in its early stages, as they try to learn lessons from the episode that triggered a global health alert.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, the final contact of a person exposed to hantavirus on the cruise ship MV Hondius completed their quarantine period, tested negative and returned home,\u201d WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo further cases have been reported since May 25.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are therefore very pleased to say that WHO considers the outbreak of hantavirus over.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dutch-flagged ship set off April 1 from Ushuaia, Argentina, taking in remote islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, including Tristan da Cunha, before heading north to Tenerife in Spain\u2019s Canary Islands, where remaining passengers were evacuated.<\/p>\n
The polar exploration ship finally docked on May 18 in Rotterdam harbour in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
On May 30, the ship was cleared to put to sea again after cleaning and disinfection.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Quest for future vaccines \u2013<\/p>\n
Tedros said more than 650 contacts were identified and followed up by health authorities in 33 countries and territories.<\/p>\n
He said the WHO would continue working to understand the outbreak, and the virus itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are also coordinating a study involving 21 countries to understand how the disease develops, which will support the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines for future outbreaks,\u201d Tedros said.<\/p>\n
Spread by rodents, hantavirus is a rare virus for which no vaccines or specific treatments exist.<\/p>\n
The Andes species behind the Hondius outbreak is the only strain of\u00a0hantavirus\u00a0known to be able to jump from human to human.<\/p>\n
It had been thought that a passenger on the ship caught the virus while travelling in regions of Argentina where it is endemic.<\/p>\n
However the country\u2019s health ministry announced in June that an investigation in a second Argentine province had failed to find any virus-carrying rodents.<\/p>\n
Diana Rojas Alvarez, the WHO\u2019s high impact epidemics chief said the Hondius outbreak could be declared over as it was no longer a public health risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, Andes virus and other hantaviruses are still a public health threat for South America and some other endemic areas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Experts need to keep monitoring such viruses and preparing for further spread, and involve local communities in preparedness and prevention.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work on hantaviruses needs to continue over time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The WHO hoped the episode might spur its member states into finally completing the missing part of the Pandemic Agreement later this month, so it may finally become operational.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The World Health Organization on Thursday declared an end to the deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[12910,64,63,314457,137,3389,210250,16255,3853],"class_list":["post-777812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-argentina","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-hantavirus","tag-health","tag-international","tag-mna","tag-netherlands","tag-who"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}