“I feel physically very good; I have felt very good for many, many days,” Kornfeld told ABC. “Emotionally I feel wonderful. It’s good to be hantavirus negative.”
Complete evacuation
In total, there have been 10 cases: seven cases who fell ill on the ship, one case who disembarked on April 24, before the outbreak was identified, and fell ill in Switzerland. The two remaining cases, one from France and the other from Spain, were identified while the ship was evacuated and passengers were repatriated. The number of deaths has not changed since May 2: three in total: a Dutch couple and a German woman.
Also at the WHO press conference, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that the operation in the Canary Islands to safely evacuate the ship is complete. The operation involved flying the ship’s more than 120 passengers to their home countries or quarantining them in host countries en route to their final destinations.
“Due to the long incubation period of up to six weeks, more cases may be reported in the coming days as passengers return to their countries, where they will be quarantined and tested in specialized facilities or at home,” Tedros warned. “This does not mean that the outbreak is expanding; it shows that control measures are working, that laboratory tests are being carried out, and that people are being cared for with the support of their governments.”
The United States is monitoring 41 people who may have been exposed. This includes 18 passengers (including Kornfeld) who were evacuated from the Hondapassengers who had disembarked from the ship on April 24, and people who shared a flight with a Dutch woman (the wife of the first case) who also fell ill from the infection and died in South Africa, on the way home.
