Guardian: French woman was told by doctors hantavirus symptoms were just anxiety

[SNT Gatchaman]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/11/french-womandoctors-hantavirus-symptoms-hv-hondius

A French woman who tested positive for hantavirus after she was evacuated from a cruise ship reported symptoms to doctors onboard but was told it was probably just anxiety, the Spanish health minister has said.

Javier Padilla Bernáldez said the woman, who had been travelling on the ship at the centre of a deadly hantavirus outbreak, had been suffering flu-like symptoms but they appeared to be getting better and she did not have a fever. The World Health Organization later said the woman was in a “very critical” condition.

“They were not thinking that these symptoms were compatible with hantavirus. Why? Because what she was telling [them] was [that she had] an episode of coughing some days ago that had disappeared, and what she was having at that moment was kind of like stress or anxiety or nervousness. So it was not catalogued [as hantavirus],” Padilla said.

The French health minister, Stéphanie Rist, said the woman had started to feel very unwell on Sunday night and “tests came back positive”. Rist told France Inter radio: “Unfortunately, her symptoms worsened overnight.” She is being treated in a specialised infectious diseases unit of a hospital in Paris.