Minister of health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has addressed concerns over whether rats in SA, especially in Alexandra township, carry the deadly hantavirus that recently claimed the lives of a few passengers on a luxury cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Alex, in northern Johannesburg, is notorious for the marauding army of rats that the government has tried to deal with over the years, including moving owls into the area as well as spending R2.5m on chemicals to rid the township of the rodents.
Briefing the portfolio committee of health on Wednesday, Motsoaledi said: “South African rats do not carry this virus...it is a virus that is found in the Americas — in North and South America — and it is a virus that is found in Europe and in India. I do not know of any case that has ever been picked up in SA among the rats."
Motsoaledi said the department of health has traced 62 people who could have been in contact with the two hantavirus patients on the ship who were flown to SA after contracting the disease.
He said 42 of those have already been contacted and are being monitored.
The two cases involve a 69-year-old British man who is in the intensive care unit of a Sandton hospital and a 69-year-old Dutch woman who died after collapsing at OR Tambo International Airport. Her husband was the first to die aboard the ship, and the woman was at the airport to catch a flight back home to the Netherlands when she fell sick and was taken to a hospital in Kempton Park, where she later died.
Motsoaledi said the health department and the World Health Organisation are doing contact tracing locally and internationally.
Of the 38 known hantavirus strains, the recent cases involve the Andes strain, which is predominant in South America, he said.
Preliminary tests by the National Institute for Communicable Diseases confirmed this strain, which is unique in its ability to spread through human-to-human transmission.
“But as we said, we want to repeat: such transmission is very rare and only happens due to very close contact between people,” said Motsoaledi.
“Obviously, if it is a virus that can spread via human‑to‑human contact, the first thing to do is to do contact tracing. The total number of people who were traced, who could have come in contact with them, was 62,” he said.
“Forty-two of them have already been traced, and they are being observed. And as I said, the work is ongoing; they are left with 20 whom they must still check for this contact, in one way or the other, with the patients.”
Motsoaledi said the cruise ship MV Hondius is en route to Italy and would not be docking in South Africa.
He said the ship had already arrived in Cape Verde on Tuesday evening, and on arrival, an 81‑year‑old Dutch citizen collapsed and died.
“She was not tested for anything, so nobody knows; you can only make conclusions, but she was not tested. At the same time, there was a doctor on board with a guide who was sick.
“Cape Verde officials sent in a team of doctors to the ship to examine them. Over the past 24 to 36 hours, there was no new development, no more infections,” he said.
The commitee, however, raised concerns about the country’s Port of Health and its urgency to pick up illness, noting that the patient passed had through the borders of the country at OR Tambo.
In response Motsoaledi said there was no warning coming from ariline staff because even they did not pick up anything.
He said the woman’s temperature was scanned by the airport, and she was not regarded as a patient but a traveller.
He added that the country’s health safety system at ports of entry should not be assessed by this one case.
“This lady went through the temperature scan, and it never recorded anything. So it cannot be said that SA’s safety mechanism was so lax that it just allowed people in without screening. We are talking about one person here, by the way — it’s one person," he said.
Sowetan
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