Health experts raced to contain a potential spread of hantavirus as two suspected cases emerged on Friday, far from the luxury cruise liner where the outbreak started.
The latest reports involved a man who fell ill after leaving the ship and a woman who became sick after sitting near an infected cruise passenger on a plane. The occurrences reported by health officials thousands of miles apart — one in Spain, the other on the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha — are separate from the World Health Organisation’s tally of eight people who became ill aboard the Dutch-flagged ship MV Hondius.
Three of those people have died. WHO officials said on Friday that six of the eight suspected cases have been confirmed as hantavirus, a potentially fatal disease typically carried and spread by rodents.