Health officials monitoring Arizona passenger who returned home from cruise ship hit by hantavirus

Arizona health officials said Thursday they are monitoring a resident who returned to the state from the cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak.

Experts from the Arizona Department of Health Services said the traveler has no symptoms and emphasized that the risk to the general public is very low.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified state officials Tuesday about the person’s return.

ADHS officials declined to reveal the location of the passenger’s home. They said the person’s local county health agency is monitoring the person’s condition daily.

Testing for hantavirus isn’t effective until symptoms appear, so there is no way to confirm whether the asymptomatic Arizona traveler is infected at this time.

It can take more than a month after hantavirus exposure for symptoms to appear. The individual will be monitored by local health authorities for 42 days before being fully cleared.

However, state officials said there is no evidence that the Arizona traveler was in close enough contact with an infected fellow passenger to catch the disease.

What is known about cruise ship hantavirus outbreak

The Arizona traveler apparently was among approximately two dozen passengers who disembarked April 24 from the cruise ship MV Hondius on the South Atlantic island of St. Helena. It was the final stop of the cruise, which started in Argentina on April 1, for some on board, but not others.

Before the ship reached St. Helena, a 70-year-old Dutch man died on board April 11 after falling ill a week earlier. The man’s wife disembarked when his body was removed from the ship in St. Helena. She collapsed and died April 26 in a South African airport while on a layover during her trip home.

After the ship left St. Helena, several other passengers fell ill, including a German woman who died May 2. That same day, a British man who had been evacuated from the ship after getting sick tested positive for hantavirus in South Africa.

The World Health Organization declared a hantavirus outbreak on the ship after testing on the Dutch woman’s body confirmed that she had the disease. Hantaviruses do not spread easily between people, but officials are working to prevent the outbreak from becoming an epidemic.

As of Friday, about 140 passengers and crew members remained on the MV Hondius, which is operated by Oceanwide Expeditions. The cruise ship was heading to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, where Spanish authorities are preparing to perform careful evacuations.

Arizona health officials said they haven’t been notified about any other Arizona passengers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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