A French woman infected with a severe form of hantavirus is on life support in a hospital in Paris after returning from a rat virus-stricken cruise.
She is being treated with an artificial lung, according to Dr Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat Hospital.
The woman, who was on board the rat virus-stricken MV Hondius, is suffering from a severe form of the disease.
It has caused life-threatening lung and heart problems, Dr Lescure said.
Blood is being pumped through the artificial lung in what is "the final stage of supportive care", he added.
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She is among five French nationals who were placed under medical surveillance at the hospital after possible exposure to hantavirus.
It comes as ten people linked to the cruise ship outbreak are set to arrive in the UK to self isolate.
The group, from the UK overseas territories of St Helena and Ascension Island, had contact with people affected by the rat virus outbreak and will be relocated to British soil.
Authorities said the group are already isolating and will continue to do so once they arrive in Britain. The UK Health Security Agency confirmed the ten are being brought to the UK as a precautionary measure so they can be provided with NHS care if they fall ill.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organisation’s director general, said: “At the moment, there is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak.”
But he added: “But of course the situation could change, and given the long incubation period of the virus, it’s possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks.”
Three people have died linked to the outbreak on the MV Hondius, which was traveling from Argentina to Cape Verde.
Two of the victims have been named as Dutch ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, 70, and his wife, Mirjam Schilperoord, 69.
The outbreak struck down Mr. Schilperoord on April 11, before his grieving wife died a few days later.
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One British man with hantavirus is still being cared for in Johannesburg and is thought to be improving, while another is in the Netherlands.
Another British national has hantavirus and is isolating where he lives on the remote South Atlantic Island of Tristan da Cunha.
On Tuesday, two planes carrying 28 passengers from the ship landed in the Netherlands, as a Dutch hospital treating a patient with the rat virus has quarantined 12 staffers as a preventative measure.
Dutch hospital staff members were placed into preventive quarantine for six weeks after blood and urine were handled without updated and more strict protocols, the Radboudumc hospital in the city of Nijmegen said, adding that the infection risk is very low and patient care continues uninterrupted.
Meanwhile, Italy’s top infectious diseases hospital said on Tuesday it would examine biological samples from a man in quarantine having come into contact with a woman who died of Hantavirus.
The 25-year-old from the southern region of Calabria had been placed in quarantine after traveling on a Dutch KLM flight alongside a woman who later died from a hantavirus infection.
It was previously reported that the man was being transferred to the Spallanzani hospital in Rome, but the hospital later clarified that it was only awaiting his biological samples in order to analyze them.
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