Italy’s health ministry has confirmed that every person currently under observation in the country in connection with the MV Hondius hantavirus outbreak has tested negative. The reassuring results cover six individuals, including four who shared a KLM flight with a passenger who later died of the virus, a British tourist in Milan, and an Argentine woman hospitalised in Messina.
Italy’s Ministry of Health confirmed on Wednesday that all tests conducted so far on people under observation in the country in connection with the international hantavirus outbreak have returned negative results. Six people in total are currently being monitored across Italy, each linked to the outbreak through different routes of potential exposure.
The announcement is a significant moment of relief for Italian health authorities, who have been managing a geographically dispersed surveillance operation involving multiple regions and contact-tracing chains across several continents.
The KLM Flight Group
Four of the six people under observation are Italian passengers who transited Rome’s Fiumicino Airport on KLM flight KL592, which briefly had on board a Dutch woman who later died of the Andes strain of hantavirus in Johannesburg on 26 April. The woman had boarded the aircraft at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg before being removed by KLM crew due to her medical condition; the flight then departed for Amsterdam.
The four Italian passengers were traced to Calabria, Campania, Tuscany and Veneto. Among them is a 25-year-old sailor, currently in quarantine in Villa San Giovanni near Reggio Calabria. His biological samples were sent to Rome’s Spallanzani infectious diseases hospital for analysis after he began displaying symptoms consistent with the virus earlier this week.
Those samples have now returned negative. The Spallanzani has also confirmed that a South African doctor, who was on the same KLM flight and is being monitored in Veneto, also tested negative. The other two KLM passengers under observation are a woman in the Florence area and a 24-year-old sailor placed under mandatory quarantine in Torre del Greco, near Naples.
The British tourist in Milan
A sixth case under observation adds a separate thread to Italy’s involvement in the outbreak. A British tourist has been placed in quarantine in a Milan hospital after it emerged that he was aboard the flight taken by the Dutch woman — the wife of the first victim of the MV Hondius outbreak — from St Helena to South Africa, after she disembarked from the stricken cruise ship on 24 April.
She subsequently deteriorated during that flight to Johannesburg and died upon arrival at the emergency department on 26 April. Tests carried out on the British tourist and his travel companion have both come back negative.
The Spallanzani also analysed samples from an Argentine woman admitted to hospital in Messina with pneumonia, who comes from a region of Argentina where hantavirus is endemic. Her case was flagged as a precautionary measure given the current heightened vigilance around the virus. Those tests have also returned negative.
