MADRID, May 8 (Reuters) – A 32-year-old woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante has symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection and is being tested, Spanish health officials said on Friday.
The woman was a passenger on the same flight as a patient who died in Johannesburg after travelling on the MV Hondius cruise ship and contracting the virus, Secretary of State for Health Javier Padilla told reporters.
Authorities have identified the Andes strain of hantavirus on the ship, a version that can spread from human to human in rare cases, typically only after close contact.
The woman has “mild respiratory symptoms” and is being transferred to a hospital in the city of Alicante where she will be tested for the virus, with results expected 24 to 48 hours later, according to a statement on the regional health department’s website.
Padilla said the woman, a resident of Alicante in the Valencia region, was sitting two rows behind the cruise ship passenger, but the contact between them “was brief” since the passenger had only been “on board for a short time” during the flight.
Padilla added that Valencia’s regional health authorities were tracing the people the woman has been in contact with over the past few days.
(Reporting by David Latona, Joan Faus; Editing by Aislinn Laing, Victoria Waldersee and Andrew Heavens)
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