Second suspected hantavirus case in Spain amid outbreak

A second woman in Spain is suspected of having contracted the Andes hantavirus strain, Spanish health officials said on Saturday.

She had been on the same KLM flight on which an infected Dutch woman, who later died, tried to take from Johannesburg to Amsterdam after leaving the virus-stricken luxury cruise ship Hondius last month.

The woman in question lives in Catalonia and has been admitted to hospital for quarantine as a precautionary measure, the Spanish Health Ministry said on X on Friday evening. However, she is not showing any symptoms of the disease.

Earlier on Friday, a woman in Alicante with mild symptoms of infection was taken to hospital for isolation, said Health Ministry state secretary Javier Padilla.

She had been on the same KLM flight, sitting two rows behind the Dutch woman infected with the hantavirus.

The woman had a mild cough and was therefore possibly also infected, Padilla said. The results of any PCR tests carried out on both women were not immediately known.

The Dutch woman had cut short a cruise on the Hondius to St Helena after her husband died on board. On April 24, she flew to South Africa with his body and tried unsuccessfully to return home the following day.

She was already on board the aircraft with other passengers but was taken off the plane shortly before take-off due to her poor state of health and died shortly afterwards in hospital.

About 150 passengers and crew from 28 countries are reported to have initially been aboard the Hondius, which set sail from Argentina on April 1 and is due to reach Spain's Canary Islands on May 10. However, dozens of people disembarked on St Helena.

The Spanish authorities also reported that another person had left Spain after taking the same flight as the deceased woman.

The South African woman had spent a week in Barcelona and had subsequently returned to her home country, said Padilla.

Health Minister Mónica García wrote on X that the woman was symptom-free and had not had close contact with other people in Barcelona.

A flight attendant on the KLM flight from Johannesburg to Amsterdam, who had also been in contact with the Dutch woman who died, has now been discharged from hospital. She is not infected, according to the Dutch Health Ministry.

Hantavirus typically spreads from rodents, infecting people through airborne virus particles from rodent urine, droppings or saliva. Transmission of the Andes strain to humans is rare, according to the World Health Organization.