Among the five is the KLM flight attendant that one is currently admitted with mild complaints at the Amsterdam UMC. It is not yet known whether she has the hantavirus among her members.
The GGD Kennemerland is conducting a so-called aircraft contact investigation into the relevant KLM flight of April 25. The health organization says it has about fifty people in the picture who sat in the same row as the Dutch woman and in the two rows in front and behind her.
The RIVM reported earlier today that a total of three people with complaints had been tested for the Andean variant of the hantavirus. They were on the same flight as the 69-year-old woman who died from the effects of that variant in Johannesburg.
The Dutch woman had disembarked from the cruise ship Hondius in Saint Helena, where the hantavirus had broken out. Her husband had died earlier on the ship. The woman flew from St. Helena to Johannesburg with stomach and intestinal complaints and was therefore also on board the KLM flight to Amsterdam for a short time.
‘Our responsibility’
The spokesperson for the GGD Kennemerland says that the GGD is only investigating the flight from Johannesburg to Amsterdam. “We do this because that is a flight that went to Schiphol and that is our responsibility,” she says. According to her, the contact investigation into the other flight, from St Helena to Johannesburg, is being carried out by the airline involved and the South African health authorities.