South African health authorities have said that the Andes strain - which is prominent in Latin America where the cruise originated - was found in both confirmed patients after tests conducted by the country's National Institute for Communicable Diseases.
A document presented to South Africa's parliament on Wednesday morning, seen by the BBC, says the Andes strain is "the only strain that is known to cause human to human transmission".
It stressed that transmission of the virus is still rare and it only spreads between people in "very close contact".
The document details efforts to trace all known contacts of people known to have been infected, and says that as of this morning 42 of 62 people have been traced.
ANDV was first discovered in 1995 in Argentina and in Chile later that year. More than a hundred cases of HPS caused by Andes virus occur each year, most of them in Argentina and Chile.
It's one of the downsides of a cruise. Obviously, these diseases exist outside of the cruise on land. How else would it have gotten on? But if you are on land and one person in 1500 people gets a disease, they don't prevent you from travelling. But if you happen to be on a cruise when that happens, you can get your life turned upside down with a quarantine.
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From the article:
Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andes_virus
It's one of the downsides of a cruise. Obviously, these diseases exist outside of the cruise on land. How else would it have gotten on? But if you are on land and one person in 1500 people gets a disease, they don't prevent you from travelling. But if you happen to be on a cruise when that happens, you can get your life turned upside down with a quarantine.