Hantavirus patient put on artificial lung after contracting ‘most severe’ condition

MV Hondius, the cruise ship where the outbreak began last month (Picture: REUTERS)

There are now 11 confirmed hantavirus cases following an outbreak of the potentially fatal disease aboard the doomed MV Hondius.

One of them, a French woman who had travelled on the ship, is now being treated with an artificial lung after she became critically ill with the disease.

She has been admitted to the intensive care unit of Paris’ Bichat Hospital and is receiving treatment for what medical professionals have described as ‘the most severe form of the cardiopulmonary presentation’.

French authorities are also reportedly scrambling to trace anyone who may have been exposed.

Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat Hospital, sa...