A French woman, who was aboard the virus-affected cruise ship MV Hondius, finds herself in critical condition after a misdiagnosis by doctors who initially attributed her symptoms to anxiety. Her ordeal began after disembarking from the ship when it docked in Spain’s Canary Islands.
According to The Guardian, the woman began experiencing flu-like symptoms during her journey on the luxury cruise liner. Despite initial signs of recovery, her health rapidly declined following her departure from the vessel on Sunday.
Doctors initially dismissed her symptoms as anxiety or stress, a conclusion drawn from her report of having a cough that had subsided. Spanish Health Minister Javier Padilla Bernáldez explained that the medical team did not consider her symptoms consistent with hantavirus, due in part to the nature of her complaints which were interpreted as nervousness rather than a more serious condition.
The situation took a grave turn when the woman, one of five French passengers who disembarked, was transported to a hospital in Paris. There, her condition deteriorated further, and she was placed under the care of a specialized infectious disease unit, as confirmed by French health authorities.
As of now, the woman remains in critical condition, underscoring the complexity and challenges of diagnosing and treating illnesses in the midst of a widespread viral outbreak.
She remains in a critical condition and is being treated by a specialized infectious disease unit, French health officials said.
Meanwhile, as the outbreak continues to unfold, a dozen hospital workers in the Netherlands were thrown into quarantine after they handled blood and urine from a hantavirus patient without strict PPE protocols.
The staffers at the Radboudumc hospital in the city of Nijmegen will be quarantined for six weeks as a preventative measures, officials said.
It comes as health officials in various countries continued to monitor the ordeal after the rare Andes strain of hantavirus, is communicable between people, ran rampant on the ship — killing three passengers and putting dozens of others at risk for infection.
Here’s the latest on the deadly hantavirus outbreak on the Dutch cruise ship:
Eighteen Americans were flown back to the US and quarantined on Monday, with the one passenger who tested weakly positive now in a Nebraska biocontainment unit.
