Health Minister Aaron Motsoaled Briefing Parliament’s Portfolio Committee. Pic GovZa
Thokozile Mnguni
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says South Africa moved swiftly to detect and contain the country’s confirmed Hantavirus cases, with contact tracing beginning soon after the first alerts were received.
Briefing Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Health today, Motsoaledi said health teams had already identified dozens of people who may have come into contact with the infected travellers.
“The total number of people who were traced and who could have come in contact with them were 62. Some 42 of them have already been traced and they are being observed. The work is ongoing,” Motsoaledi told the committee.
The cases involve three passengers linked to the MV Hondius, which had been travelling from Argentina to the Canary Islands via Cape Verde.
One of the patients, a woman travelling from St Helena, collapsed after arriving at OR Tambo International Airport and later died in South Africa. Her husband, who was also infected, died in St Helena, while a third patient remains in hospital in Johannesburg after being medically evacuated from Ascension Island.
Addressing concerns about airport screening, Motsoaledi said the woman had not shown visible signs of illness before boarding her flight.
“In this case, there was no warning coming in because even the staff did not pick up anything. When she arrived at the airport, she came in just like any traveller, not as a sick person,” he said.
Motsoaledi also confirmed the virus involved is the Andes strain of Hantavirus, a rare strain mainly found in South America.
“Person-to-person contact is very rare, and it has happened under specific conditions, namely, there must be very close person-to-person contact for transmission to occur from one human to another,” he said.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases says monitoring of identified contacts remains ongoing, with support from the World Health Organisation and international health experts.