Three evacuated from hantavirus-hit cruise ship

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Emergency crews on Wednesday evacuated three people from a cruise ship stricken with a deadly outbreak of hantavirus, the UN's health agency said, as experts confirmed a rare strain that can be transmitted between humans.

Two crew members and one other person thought to be infected were being taken off the MV Hondius, anchored off Cape Verde, the World Health Organization said. They would be flown to the Netherlands for treatment, it added.

Police officers wearing white hazmat suits waited at the port in the West African country's capital city Praia, as a small red ambulance boat sailed back and forth to the cruise ship.

The vessel has been at the centre of an international health scare since Saturday, when the UN's health agency was informed that three passengers had died and the suspected cause was hantavirus. The rare disease is usually spread from infected rodents, typically through urine, droppings and saliva.

Passengers began falling ill a month ago. A Dutch woman died in South Africa on April 26 after having left the cruise following the death of her husband. Two other people are still being treated -- one in Johannesburg and one in the Swiss city of Zurich.

Spain's health minister has said the ship will sail to the Canary Islands once the evacuations have been completed, while the Netherlands said two infectious disease experts were flying out to Cape Verde and to board the vessel for the journey.

The ship, operated by Dutch firm Oceanwide Expeditions, set sail from Ushuaia in Argentina on April 1 and has been anchored off Cape Verde since Sunday while emergency teams try to deal with a situation.

'Very rare'

Health experts raised concern that a wider outbreak could be on the cards after it emerged that the Dutch woman who died had flown on a commercial plane from the island of Saint Helena to Johannesburg while she was showing symptoms.

Officials are trying to trace people on that flight, which South African-based carrier Airlink said was carrying 82 passengers and six crew.

South Africa's Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday that tests had found the Andes strain, the only one that can be passed between humans.

"Such transmission is very rare and only happens due to very close contact between people," the minister said, without specifying which patient the sample had come from.

The Swiss health ministry also confirmed that a passenger from the ship was being treated in hospital in Zurich and had tested positive for the Andes strain.

The ministry stressed that further cases were "unlikely" because transmission only occurs through very close contact.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed that three people with suspected hantavirus had now been taken off the ship. He too stressed that "the overall public health risk remains low".

Canaries-bound

Some passengers and crew have been in isolation after Cape Verde authorities barred the ship from docking. The ship is anchored just off the island nation's capital Praia.

WHO representative in Cape Verde Ann Lindstrand told AFP on Wednesday the three people taken from the ship were "stable", adding: "One of the three is asymptomatic."

Spain's health ministry said on Tuesday the ship was due to arrive in the Canaries in "three to four days", adding that the island chain was the closest place with the necessary facilities.

The cruise ship counted 88 passengers and 59 crew members, with 23 nationalities on board, the WHO said.

The Zurich patient brings the number of confirmed hantavirus cases to three, with the WHO already announcing one of the fatalities, and a British passenger currently in intensive care in Johannesburg tested and confirmed.

There are five further suspected cases, the WHO said earlier.

The WHO was trying to work out how hantavirus had appeared on the ship, the first person who died having developed symptoms on April 6.