A fourth California resident may have been exposed to the Andes hantavirus associated with the outbreak aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship that began last month, California health officials said Monday.
The person was not a passenger on the cruise ship, and may have been exposed while on a plane in South Africa sitting near an ill person who had been a passenger on the ship. The ill person was later confirmed to have hantavirus, and they were taken off the flight before it took off.
The California resident returned home over the weekend to Sacramento County, has no symptoms, and is being monitored by local health officials, state public health officer Dr. Erica Pan said. They will be monitored for the 42-day incubation period, during which they are advised to limit their activities outside the home to only essential activities.
The three other Californians exposed to the Andes hantavirus were passengers aboard the cruise ship. One disembarked before the outbreak began and returned home to Santa Clara County last week.
The other two have been flown to a federal medical facility in Nebraska, where they and other U.S. cruise passengers are being monitored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
All four Californians have no symptoms, and there are no known cases of Andes hantavirus in the state. The risk to the public is extremely low, Pan said.
A different strain of the hantavirus, known as sin nombre, has been in California for decades and leads to about three infections a year. Both types of hantavirus are usually transmitted to humans from infected rodent droppings. Sin nombre has not spread from person to person, but the Andes hantavirus has in rare cases spread between people after prolonged sustained contact from an ill person.
The Californian who may have been exposed on the aircraft was sitting within a two-seat radius, a row behind or a row ahead of the ill person, for at least 15 minutes, which is the CDC’s guideline for when someone needs to be notified about a potential exposure.
The cruise ship outbreak has led to three deaths and five other confirmed or probable cases.