Hantavirus: Affected persons not from Saxony or Saxony-Anhalt

According to current knowledge, no people from Saxony or Saxony-Anhalt are among the passengers on the cruise ship affected by a hantavirus outbreak. This was announced by the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) on request.

People from Berlin, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Schleswig-Holstein are affected. None of the four people have symptoms so far, it added. The passengers were to be taken from Frankfurt University Hospital to their respective federal states during the course of the day. Another German passenger had been flown to the UK, where he lives, as the British news agency PA reported.

RKI chief sees no pandemic risk

On Sunday afternoon, four German passengers from the cruise ship "Hondius", among others, were taken by evacuation flight from the Canary Island of Tenerife, where the ship had docked after several weeks at sea, to Eindhoven in the Netherlands. All were asymptomatic, as the Spanish Ministry of Health announced before departure.

The head of the German Robert Koch Institute (RKI), meanwhile, sees no danger to the population. The virus could make people very ill, said Lars Schaade on ZDF's "heute journal" on Sunday evening. "But the good news is that this is not a virus that spreads. And in this respect, I think I can say: I don't actually see any danger to the population in Germany or any risk of a pandemic."