A medical team of the British Army has reportedly parachuted onto a remote Atlantic island where one of the 221 residents has a suspected case of hantavirus as experts race to control the virus spread.
The patient was a passenger on the MV Hondius and disembarked last month, the Associated Press reported.
Also read: Hantavirus cruise outbreak update: What happens to the passengers on board?
According to the UK defense ministry, a team of six paratroopers and two medical clinicians arrived at the remote Tristan da Cunha island via a Royal Air Force transport plane, which also dropped oxygen and medical equipment.
Tristan da Cunha is Britain’s most remote inhabited overseas territory, about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) from the nearest inhabited island, St. Helena. The group of volcanic islands has no airstrip and is usually accessible only by boat on a six-day voyage from Cape Town, South Africa.
What we know about the hantavirus patient on remote island
The latest patient of the hantavirus lives is a British man who live son the remote island of Tristan da Cunha. He was aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship that has been hit by a deadly outbreak of the virus and has raised concerns globally over a public spread of the infection. The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly said the risk to the wider public is low and the virus does not transmit easily.
The person first reported symptoms two weeks after leaving the vessel and is said be in a stable condition while isolating. Six cases of the virus have now been confirmed, including of two other Britons currently being treated off the ship.
Latest update on hantavirus outbreak
The first group of passengers of the cruise ship hit by the hantavirus outbreak began disembarking into small boats on Sunday. The boat, consisting of all Spanish nationals, is headed to Tenerife’s Port of Granadilla, from where they will be taken to a hospital in Madrid.
At the start of the evacuation, 14 Spanish passengers were the first to disembark, in groups of five, and were taken to the shore. From there, the passengers will be taken to the shore, where they will board buses and be taken to the local airport.
According to Spain’s Health Ministry, the cruise ship cleared all appropriate health checks before being anchored near Tenerife on Sunday. Health officials boarded the ships to conduct these final checks.
Spain’s health minister, Mónica García, also informed that the external health team found 140 people on board to be asymptomatic. A report of the MV Hondius said that the hygiene and environmental conditions are appropriate on the ship and that they did not detect rodents, “so transmission by exposure to rodents on board is not likely,” Reuters quoted the report as saying.
