Praia (Cape Verde) (AFP) - Emergency crews on Wednesday evacuated three people from a cruise ship hit with a deadly outbreak of hantavirus, the UN’s health agency said, as experts confirmed it to be a rare strain that can be transmitted between humans.

Two sick crew members and one other person who had been in contact with one of the confirmed cases were evacuated from the MV Hondius off Cape Verde, the World Health Organization said. They later boarded flights at the airport in the country’s capital Praia.

Health officials played down any fears of a wider global outbreak, with WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus telling AFP it was not like the Covid-19 pandemic, adding: “The risk to the rest of the world is low.”

The vessel has been at the centre of an international health scare since Saturday, when the UN’s health agency was informed that three passengers had died and the suspected cause was hantavirus. The rare disease is usually spread from infected rodents, typically through urine, droppings and saliva.

Passengers began falling ill a month ago. A Dutch woman died in South Africa on April 26 after having left the cruise following the death of her husband. Two other people are still being treated – one in Johannesburg and one in the Swiss city of Zurich.

Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia Gomez meanwhile said the vessel would dock within the next three days in Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands, and all foreign passengers would be flown back to their home countries from there if their health allowed.

Two infectious disease experts from the Netherlands were expected to join the passengers for the onward trip, according to Dutch officials.

The Hondius set sail from Ushuaia in Argentina on April 1 and has been anchored off Cape Verde since Sunday while emergency teams try to deal with the situation.

- ‘Very rare’ -

Health experts warned of the risk of a wider outbreak after it emerged that the Dutch woman who died had flown on a commercial plane from the island of Saint Helena to Johannesburg while she was showing symptoms.

Officials are now trying to trace people on that flight, which South African-based carrier Airlink said was carrying 82 passengers and six crew.

Officials around the world, meanwhile, echoed Tedros’s comments that the danger was low.

“Such transmission is very rare and only happens due to very close contact between people,” South Africa’s Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday.

He confirmed that tests had found the Andes virus, the only form of hantavirus that can be passed between humans.

Similarly, the Swiss health ministry confirmed that a passenger from the ship was being treated in hospital in Zurich and had tested positive for the Andes strain.

“There is currently no risk to the Swiss public,” the ministry said.

- Canaries-bound -

The WHO’s representative in Cape Verde, Ann Lindstrand, told AFP the three people taken from the ship were “stable”, adding: “One of the three is asymptomatic.”

AFP footage showed a small red ambulance boat crewed by staff in hazmat suits and masks arriving next to the ship and three people stepping on board from a side door, while a group of other passengers gathered on the front deck.

Two flights later took off from the airport in Praia, at least one of them bound for Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

The cruise ship originally counted 88 passengers and 59 crew members, with 23 nationalities on board.

The Zurich patient brings the number of confirmed hantavirus cases to three, with the WHO already confirming one of the fatalities and a British passenger currently in intensive care in Johannesburg had tested positive.

There are a total of five further suspected cases including the other two deaths, the WHO said earlier.

The WHO was trying to work out how hantavirus had appeared on the ship, the first person who died having developed symptoms on April 6.

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