News24 | KLM flight attendant being tested for hantavirus after showing mild symptoms
A KLM flight attendant who came into contact with a Dutch woman who was taken off a KLM plane and later died, is being tested for hantavirus.
Robin Utrecht/ANP via AFP
A KLM flight attendant was tested for hantavirus after showing mild symptoms.Dutch health authorities are contacting people who were on the flight.Two Singapore residents were isolated and awaiting hantavirus test results.A flight attendant for the KLM airline is being tested for the hantavirus after showing mild symptoms and being admitted to hospital in Amsterdam, a Dutch health ministry spokesperson told AFP on Thursday.The woman was undergoing tests in hospital, said the spokesperson, Mischa Stubenitsky.RTL media reported that the flight attendant had come into contact with a Dutch woman who was taken off a KLM plane and later died of the virus in South Africa.KLM said on Wednesday that the passenger had been briefly on a flight from Johannesburg to the Netherlands, but was removed before take-off.“Due to the passenger’s medical condition at the time, the crew decided not to allow the passenger to travel on the flight,” which was flight KL592 from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on 25 April at 23:15 local time.“After the passenger was removed from the aircraft, the flight departed for the Netherlands,” added KLM.READ | WHO tracing contacts of hantavirus cruise ship passenger who was on Johannesburg flightDutch health authorities are contacting people on the flight “as a precaution,” KLM said in its statement.A total of 30 passengers left the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius on 24 April during its call at the remote British island of Saint Helena, the cruise ship’s Dutch operator said on Thursday.“Thirty guests disembarked MV Hondius on Saint Helena on April 24, 2026. This number includes the body of the guest who passed away on board MV Hondius on April 11, 2026. The first confirmed case of hantavirus was not reported until May 4,” Oceanwide Expeditions said in a statement.The company added that all people who left the ship had been contacted.Officials in Singapore revealed that two Singaporean residents were awaiting hantavirus test results.The residents who had been on board a hantavirus-hit cruise ship have been isolated as they await test results for the rare respiratory disease, Singapore’s Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA) said on Thursday.“Two Singapore residents had been on board the cruise ship MV Hondius, which has reported an outbreak of Andes hantavirus. Both individuals have been isolated at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, where they are being tested for hantavirus,” a CDA statement said.“Their test results are pending. One has a runny nose but is otherwise well, and the other is asymptomatic. The risk to the general public in Singapore is currently low.”The fate of the MV Hondius has sparked international alarm after three people travelling on the ship died, though health officials have played down fears of a wider global outbreak from the virus, which is less contagious than Covid-19.People thought to have contracted the virus are being treated or isolating in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and South Africa.Hantavirus is a rare respiratory disease that is usually spread from infected rodents and can cause respiratory and cardiac distress as well as haemorrhagic fevers. There are no vaccines and no known cure, meaning that treatment consists solely of attempting to relieve the symptoms.The version detected aboard the stricken Hondius ship was a rare strain known as the Andes virus, which can be transmitted between humans.
