{"id":416233,"date":"2026-05-07T12:36:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T12:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/416233\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T12:36:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T12:36:23","slug":"who-raises-hantavirus-outbreak-count-to-8-possible-cases-as-spain-calls-emergency-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/416233\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO raises hantavirus outbreak count to 8 possible cases as Spain calls emergency meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the total number of hantavirus cases on the luxury cruise ship<\/a> to eight, three of which confirmed in a laborator, and five others suspected.<\/p>\n

The eighth case is another passenger on the MV Hondius ship, confirmed by Swiss authorities, who has been admitted to a hospital in Zurich.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the WHO has also confirmed that the hantavirus is of the Andean strain, which has a history of human-to-human transmission.<\/p>\n

The health body is working with the countries involved to carry out international contact tracing, with the aim of ensuring that potentially exposed people are monitored and that any further spread of the disease is limited.<\/p>\n

\"Health
\nHealth workers in front of an ambulance that has transferred hentavirus patients from the cruise ship \/ World Health Organization<\/p>\n

Political meeting<\/p>\n

Spanish PM Pedro S\u00e1nchez has called an emergency meeting with some ministers on Wednesday morning to discuss the WHO request to dock in the Canary Islands.<\/p>\n

Although Spain initially rejected the request, the central government later accepted it, despite the “strong opposition” of the local Canarian government.<\/p>\n

Moncloa justifies the call in compliance with international law in the face of the request of the WHO, which asks Spain to manage the evacuation and health care of the passengers of the Dutch-flagged ship, currently anchored off the coast of Cape Verde.<\/p>\n

The president of the Canary Islands government, Fernando Clavijo, of the regional Coalici\u00f3n Canaria party, said that he had learned of the central government’s change of approach through leaks, without any prior consultation.<\/p>\n

Clavijo asked S\u00e1nchez for an urgent meeting and warned that he would do “everything possible from a legal point of view” to prevent the docking of the MV Hondius.<\/p>\n

\"A
\nA boat with health workers who have treated cruise ship patients with hantavirus \/ World Health Organization<\/p>\n

Home isolation<\/p>\n

Catalonia’s Secretary of Public Health, Esteve Fern\u00e1ndez, expects that the five Catalans traveling on the cruise ship will self-isolate at home if they disembark the ship without showing symptoms.<\/p>\n

They will be given medical check ups after leaving the ship and be monitored while at home.<\/p>\n

At the moment, the five are feeling well and not showing symptoms, but if they do start to have symptoms, they would be treated at Hospital Cl\u00ednic.<\/p>\n

Fern\u00e1ndez has acknowledged that this is an \u201cexceptional situation\u201d but has asked to remain calm and not fall into \u201cunfounded alarm.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the total number of hantavirus cases on the luxury cruise ship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-416233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}