A Dutch flight attendant who came in contact with one of the ill MV Hondius cruise ship passengers who later died has been hospitalized with a suspected hantavirus infection in Amsterdam.
According to Dutch news outlet RTL Nieuws, the unidentified KLM crew member was recently picked up by medical crews at her home in the Dutch city of Haarlem after experiencing mild symptoms.
The woman came in contact with a sickened 69-year-old Dutch woman who had been transferred from the ship to Johannesburg, South Africa, late last month. The elderly passenger was headed home to the Netherlands for treatment when she collapsed at the airport and later died.
However, she was able to board the flight for a "short time" before being taken off. "Due to the passenger’s medical condition at the time, the crew decided not to allow the passenger to travel on the flight," a KLM spokesperson said.
The woman's 70-year-old husband and a German national have also died in the MV Hondius outbreak. The ship is now en route to Spain after being stuck off the coast of Western Africa for days.
"Human hantavirus infection is primarily acquired through contact with the urine, faeces, or saliva of infected rodents," according to the World Health Organization (WHO). "It is a rare but severe disease that can be deadly. Although uncommon, limited human-to-human transmission has been reported in previous outbreaks of Andes virus (a specific species of hantavirus)."
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