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 secretary of state for health Javier Padilla told journalists.
She was placed in “an isolation room” in hospital, which carried out a PCR test that will be analysed at the National Microbiology Centre, said Padilla. Those 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.
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 bound from Johannesburg to the Netherlands on April 25.
She was removed before take-off and died on April 26 in a Johannesburg hospital and later tested positive for hantavirus
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