JOHANNESBURG (AP) – When south african When infectious disease expert Lucille Blumberg checked her email on the morning of May 1, as the nation was celebrating the Labor Day holiday, an urgent message caught her attention.
A UK-based colleague wrote about a passenger on a cruise ship sailing thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean who was evacuated and admitted to a Johannesburg hospital with suspected pneumonia. Other people on board the ship were also ill.
The aide, which monitors diseases in remote British overseas territories in the South Atlantic Ocean, asked Blumberg to keep an eye on the traveler who had been evacuated there. ship In one of the territories, Ascension Island.
Blumberg and other experts at South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases were suddenly thrown into a race to identify the cause of the outbreak on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius.
“Even though it was a public holiday, we moved, we moved really fast,” Blumberg told The Associated Press. “It was busy. There were many conversations. There were discussions online and there was lab testing going on at the time.”
Within 24 hours, they determined what caused the person's illness hantavirusA rare rodent-borne virus. While his condition is improving, three other passengers have died and others have fallen ill.
A process of elimination to identify disease
The elderly British man arrived at a private hospital in Johannesburg a few days ago and was seriously ill, but health workers were not sure of the underlying cause.
By the time they were evacuated from the ship, two elderly Dutch passengers were still on board MV Hondius Cruise Liner Was already dead, but no worries. Ascension Island health officials reported a cluster of illnesses on board the ship that appeared to resemble pneumonia. World Health Organization.
At first, Blumberg and his colleagues thought it might be Legionella, a bacterium that causes a severe form of pneumonia. legionnaires disease. or perhaps bird flu.
“I called my infectious disease colleagues, and we had a caucus, and we had the general discussion,” Blumberg said. “Legionella has been well described in outbreaks in hotels and on cruise ships, and influenza certainly has. These people had visited islands where avian influenza is well documented.”
The tests on all of them were negative. The experts also ran a comprehensive panel of tests for other respiratory diseases. Also, all negative.
The team then began to look more closely where the ship came From – argentina – And the fact that the passengers on the ship were curious bird watchers And reportedly went to parts of South America where there were birds, but also rodents.
Collaboration with experts from South America and the US
This pushed South African disease experts toward another theory: rare, rodent-borne. hantavirus Infection, which is found in parts of South America.
“It's a well-described virus, not common, but it's a well-described virus in Chile and Argentina,” Blumberg said. He said his work was aided by a collaboration of hantavirus experts from South America and the United States, facilitated by the UN health agency WHO.
“You can get on an online Zoom (call) and ask your questions and get advice. It's not an every day thing. So it was quite extraordinary,” Blumberg said.
By then it was Saturday morning. Blumberg was said to head South Africa's only laboratory that can test for hantavirus.
“I said, we want to do Hanta, and she said, 'Yeah, I'm coming.'”
Tests conducted on blood samples from the sick person came back positive for hantavirus that afternoon. The team ran a second set of tests to make sure, Blumberg said.
Finally, there was a 'wow moment'
Those positive tests, which also identified the Andes strain of hantavirus, allowed WHO to inform the cruise ship what it was dealing with and make an announcement. outbreak on board. While hantaviruses do not spread easily from person to person, the WHO says Andes virus can spread between people.
The test results led Blumberg to rush to collect blood samples from a Dutch woman – one of the first two cruise passengers to die – who had disembarked from the ship with her husband's body on the island of St. Helena and flown to South Africa, where she died.
The hantavirus test conducted posthumously on him was also positive.
“It was a bit of a surprise moment,” Blumberg said. “And at least once you know what you're dealing with, it's a lot easier to respond.”
South Africa's health ministry said the British man, who was the first confirmed case of hantavirus infection from the cruise ship, is recovering in hospital. Meanwhile, the ship is arrived At the Dutch port of Rotterdam, where it was disinfected, and the remaining crew members disembarked.
“I've been doing outbreaks for 25 years. This is what we do. We do this every day,” she said. “I think the important thing was to immediately answer the question that was clearly urgent and then take it from there.”
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AP coverage of cruise ship hantavirus outbreak: https://apnews.com/hub/hantavirus