The MV
Hondius, a Dutch vessel, was carrying 147 passengers and crew when a cluster with severe respiratory illness was reported to the WHO.
During the time that the ship left Argentina on April 1 to its current location off the Tenerife coast, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands, three people have died, and at least six others appear to have been infected by the virus.
Massey University infectious diseases expert, Professor David Hayman, told The Front Page that New Zealanders should not be overly alarmed at this stage.
“As far as we know, the current evidence is that you need close contact with someone infectious. We see that with many different infectious diseases.
“There are some infections like measles, which is another arenavirus, which you can just walk into a room and be infected, but others you need really close contact.
“In theory, this infection is not particularly infectious and therefore with really good barrier nursing and isolation of cases, it should not cause a large widespread epidemic.
“Our assumption is it’s gonna be like the other Andes virus outbreaks and not particularly transmissible. What we would be concerned about is if there’s more human transmission.
“One of the things we saw with Covid is the more human transmission you get, the more transmissible these things can become because they can evolve.
“But so far, there’s little evidence of what we call asymptomatic infection. It seems like the contacts of these cases will become symptomatic, and therefore, we should be able to identify them and isolate them,” he said.
One New Zealander joins a group of Australians who were aboard the ship in repatriation efforts.
The Guardian reported that the group has been sent to the Netherlands – part one of their expedition back to Australia, where they will undergo a 42-day quarantine at a centre just outside Perth. They are expected back in the Southern Hemisphere by the end of the week.
The country’s health minister, Mark Butler, has said the flight crew that brings them back to Australia will have to join them.
Australia’s taking one of the world’s hardest line measures in its repatriation of its citizens, and the sole Kiwi.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
Global outbreak proceduresA difficult evacuation responseLessons from Covid.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5pm. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.