Two Canadians who were on the hantavirus-hit cruise ship are now back in Canada and isolating in Ontario, the provincial health ministry has confirmed.Sylvia Jones, the Ontario minister of health, has said that it is not believed the two individuals are symptomatic or a transmission risk, but the situation is fluid.The minister also said that the health ministry is looking into whether there are any more people from the cruise ship who will be returning to Ontario or anywhere else in Canada.The virus has spread after an initial outbreak on the MV Hondius, a cruise ship that began in Argentina, where the virus is reported to be the most prevalent.The cruise ship's operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, has confirmed that 30 passengers had disembarked the ship on the British Overseas Territory of St. Helena on April 24, before the outbreak had been reported to authorities..One of the people who got off in St. Helena was the wife of a man who had died on board; the woman, who was from the Netherlands, then got on a flight back home but died before she got there.The woman had boarded a KLM flight back to the Netherlands but was taken off the plane in South Africa due to her deteriorating condition. She later died in a hospital in Johannesburg.A flight attendant on board the aircraft is now showing signs of the disease.So far the current count is three people have died from the hantavirus and three remain hospitalised.The virus has been called the "Andean strain" of the hantavirus and has been proven to be transmissible through human-to-human contact, unlike the rodent-to-human transmission, which is the more common way the virus spreads.All major public health agencies, including PHAC, the World Health Organization, and the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have all said the current risk to the public remains low.Despite this, tracing the spread of the virus remains difficult due to the disembarkation of passengers on St. Helena. However, authorities stress caution and confidence in global health systems to make sure the spread is contained.
