Seven more people in Ontario are being told to isolate by the province’s health officials after being linked to a global hantavirus outbreak from a cruise ship, The Canadian Press reported.
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The individuals are considered “low-risk” contacts, Jackson Jacobs, a spokesperson for Ontario’s health minister, told CP.
The seven people are in addition to the three who are isolating after being exposed to the rodent-borne virus while travelling.
All 10 of them have been told to isolate for 45 days “out of an abundance of caution” and are being monitored by local public health units.
Another six are isolating in Alberta and British Columbia, and remain asymptomatic, according to provincial health officials. One person in Canada connected to the outbreak is no longer isolating in Quebec, after the province’s health ministry said they were deemed a low-risk contact.
Someone is considered “low-risk” if they came into contact with one of the “high-risk” people.
About the three ‘high-risk’ contacts in Ontario
Late last week, Ontario said two Grey-Bruce County residents — a couple — who had been on board the MV Hondius cruise ship were isolating at home after arriving back on April 25.
The couple disembarked the ship on the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, then flew to Johannesburg.
A third person in Peel Region may have come into contact with a confirmed hantavirus case.
The three, considered “high-risk” contacts, shared a flight with a cruise passenger who later died of hantavirus.
The trio remain asymptomatic, Jacobs told CP.
Globally, virus has claimed 3 lives, while 11 are infected
At a news conference Tuesday in Madrid, the World Health Organization’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the moment, there is “no sign of larger outbreak, but of course the situation could change and, given the long incubation period of the virus, it’s possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks.”
The MV Hondius was sailing from Argentina to Cape Verde when a hantavirus outbreak was detected in early May.
Three passengers aboard the cruise ship have died, while the number of positive cases has grown to 11 internationally.
Public health officials and infectious disease physicians have stressed that Andes virus — the type of hantavirus that hit the ship and the only kind known to spread person-to-person — requires close and prolonged contact to spread and that it is not a pandemic threat.
— with files from The Canadian Press