Twelve employees of the Radboudumc university hospital in Nijmegen, in the eastern Netherlands, have been placed under preventive quarantine for six weeks after potentially being exposed to hantavirus while caring for an infected patient from the Hondius cruise ship.
According to the medical center today, during the care of a patient admitted last Thursday from the Hondius, two incidents related to the handling of biological samples occurred.
Procedures
The blood and urine of the infected patient were not processed following strict biosafety measures
On one hand, the blood drawn from the patient was processed following the standard protocol, when due to the nature of the virus it should have been handled under stricter biosafety measures.
Also, on Saturday it was found that during the disposal of the patient’s urine, the most recent international standards, which also required reinforced procedures, had not been applied.
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Although Radboudumc has emphasized that the probability of contagion is “very low,” it has decided to apply preventive quarantine as a precautionary measure for the twelve affected workers.
The chairwoman of the hospital’s board of directors, Bertine Lahuis, has regretted what happened and assured that the center will “carefully” investigate the incident to prevent it from happening again in the future.
“These measures have a great impact on all involved. We regret that this has happened in our university medical center,” Lahuis said, who also highlighted the commitment of the healthcare staff involved in caring for the infected patient.
