GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — A former passenger on a cruise ship stricken by a deadly hantavirus outbreak is being treated in a Zurich hospital for the virus, the Swiss health ministry said Wednesday.

“One person has tested positive for hantavirus in Switzerland,” said a ministry statement, adding that the man was being treated at the University Hospital Zurich (USZ).

The ministry stressed that the hospital was “prepared to deal with such cases, is able to care for the patient, and guarantee the safety of staff and all patients.”

“There is currently no risk to the Swiss public.”

According to the statement, the man returned from a trip to South America with his wife at the end of April, “after travelling on the cruise ship on which there were a number of hantavirus cases”.

The MV Hondius has been at the center of an international alert since Saturday, when the United Nations health agency was informed that three passengers had died and the suspected cause was hantavirus — a rare disease usually spread from infected rodents typically through urine, droppings and saliva.

The Dutch-flagged ship set sail from Ushuaia in Argentina on 1 April and has been anchored off Cape Verde since Sunday.

The Swiss ministry said the man being treated in Zurich said he had “noticed symptoms” after returning, and had contacted his doctor and then had gone to the USZ for further assessment.

“A test that was carried out at the reference laboratory at the Geneva University Hospitals revealed a positive result for hantavirus,” it said, adding that “it concerns the Andes virus” — the only strain of hantavirus that can be passed between humans.

It stressed that “transmission only occurs through close contact.”

The ministry said it “therefore considers the occurrence of further cases in Switzerland unlikely” and the patient’s wife had not shown symptoms, but was “self-isolating as a precaution.”

Evacuations

Evacuations were taking place Wednesday from the cruise ship, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, as experts confirmed a rare strain that can be transmitted between humans.

Three people — two crew members and one other person — thought to be infected with the virus were being taken off the MV Hondius, anchored off Cape Verde, the WHO said.

“The three of them are stable, and one of the three is asymptomatic,” Ann Lindstrand, the WHO representative in Cape Verde, told Agence France-Presse.

The Dutch-flagged cruise ship set sail from Ushuaia in Argentina on 1 April and has been anchored off Cape Verde since Sunday while emergency teams try to deal with a situation.

The ship’s Dutch operator Oceanwide Expeditions had said on Tuesday that two seriously ill crew members — one British, one Dutch — and a passenger would be taken off the ship and flown to the Netherlands, allowing the vessel to sail on to Spain’s Canary Islands.

Health experts raised concern that a wider outbreak could be on the cards after a Dutch woman with symptoms left the ship and was flown on a passenger plane to Johannesburg, where she later died on 26 April.

Efforts are under way 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 parliament committee on Wednesday that tests had found the Andes strain, the only one that can be passed between humans.

“But as we said, we want to repeat again, such transmission is very rare and only happens due to very close contact between people,” the minister said.