Spanish authorities test a woman for hantavirus after she sat near a Dutch passenger on a flight who later died from the virus.
MADRID: Spanish authorities said Friday a woman had been tested for suspected hantavirus after travelling on the same flight as a Dutch woman who stayed on the MV Hondius cruise ship and later died from the virus.
The woman has “symptoms mainly related to coughing while she was in her family home” in the eastern city of Alicante, Spanish health secretary Javier Padilla told journalists.
She was placed in “an isolation room” in hospital, which carried out a PCR test whose results “we hope to have in the first 24 hours”, he added.
“We must say this is a pretty unlikely case. A person was found who was two rows behind the person who died with hantavirus,” said Padilla.
Interior ministry sources said a South African woman who was also on the flight “is currently asymptomatic in South Africa after staying in Barcelona for a week before returning to her country”.
“During her stay, she stayed alone at a hotel and did not maintain close contact,” the sources added.
The health ministry later announced the identification of a third person who travelled on the plane, an asymptomatic woman who was observing quarantine at a hospital in the northeastern region of Catalonia.
“This person had not been identified initially due to a change of seat on the plane,” the ministry wrote on X.
Airline KLM said on Wednesday that the deceased Dutch woman — the wife of the first person to die in the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius — had briefly been on a plane from Johannesburg to the Netherlands on April 25.
She was removed before take-off, died on April 26 in a Johannesburg hospital and later tested positive for hantavirus.
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