{"id":76886,"date":"2026-05-07T10:51:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/76886\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T10:51:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:51:13","slug":"plane-believed-carrying-hantavirus-struck-evacuee-lands-in-amsterdam-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/76886\/","title":{"rendered":"Plane believed carrying hantavirus-struck evacuee lands in Amsterdam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oceanwide Expeditions<\/a> says the passenger was in stable condition, while two other evacuees had already arrived in Europe on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\"Hantavirus<\/p>\n

Hantavirus \/ Professor25<\/p>\n

A plane believed to be carrying a sick passenger from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship arrived in Amsterdam Thursday, AFP reporters saw, after an emergency evacuation from the vessel off the Cape Verde coast.<\/p>\n

The air ambulance landed at Schiphol Airport at 08:54 local time, according to an AFP reporter on the scene.<\/p>\n

Emergency medical evacuation<\/p>\n

The ship’s operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, has confirmed that a passenger “in stable condition” was to be evacuated to the Netherlands. The other two evacuees arrived in Amsterdam late Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Officials in Spain, where the flight made an unexpected stop on Gran Canaria island, confirmed that the patient “had been transferred to Amsterdam on a different medicalised aircraft” than the one scheduled.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear what would happen to this patient after landing.<\/p>\n

Of the two passengers who landed on Wednesday, one was taken to a hospital in Leiden, in the Netherlands, the other to Germany.<\/p>\n

WHO infection findings<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, a World Health Organization expert told AFP that the first hantavirus case on the MV Hondius could not have been infected during the cruise, .<\/p>\n

The polar expedition ship left Ushuaia in Argentina on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde, where it arrived on Sunday, with around 150 passengers and crew on board.<\/p>\n

The WHO, which was alerted Saturday to a rare but deadly outbreak of hantavirus aboard the Hondius, has determined that the first of three people to die must have been infected before boarding the ship.<\/p>\n

Out of eight confirmed and suspected hantavirus cases, a 70-year-old Dutch passenger was the first to fall ill.<\/p>\n

READ: Fadiel Adams to appear in Pinetown court over Magaqa murder case<\/a><\/p>\n

He began showing symptoms including fever, headache and mild diarrhoea on April 6, and developed respiratory distress on April 11, dying on board the same day, the WHO said.<\/p>\n

“The incubation period — the time between infection and the onset of symptoms — is between one and six weeks”, but it is typically “more like two to three weeks”, Anais Legand, a technical expert on viral haemorrhagic fevers at the WHO, told AFP.<\/p>\n

So the first case “could not have been infected on the ship, or on one of the islands” it called at on the way towards Cape Verde.<\/p>\n

The man “very clearly had exposure before boarding the ship”, an exposure “certainly linked to a rodent”, she said.<\/p>\n

Among the three people who have died, only the Dutch man’s 69-year-old wife has been confirmed positive so far for hantavirus.<\/p>\n

She had been suffering gastrointestinal symptoms when accompanied her husband’s remains ashore on the remote British territory of Saint Helena on April 24, before flying to Johannesburg on April 25, and dying the following day.<\/p>\n

A third passenger, a German national, is also suspected of having died from hantavirus on the ship on May 2.<\/p>\n

Two others who were on the ship and are being treated in hospitals in Johannesburg and Zurich have also tested positive, while three suspected cases have been evacuated from the ship and are being flown to the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

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