The 60-year-old traveller, who is reported to be in isolation at Milan’s Luigi Sacco Hospital, “last night tested negative, as did his companion”, Lombardy Welfare Councillor Guido Bertolaso said in a statement to the press.
Italy has placed four other passengers who were briefly on a different flight with the same woman in quarantine.
One of them, a South African man currently in isolation in Padua, has so far tested negative, Maria Rosario Campitiello, the head of Italy’s Disease Prevention Department, told a Rai radio station on Tuesday.
READ ALSO: Hantavirus in Italy: What we know about the situation so far
Samples from another, 25-year-old Federico Amaretti from Villa San Giovanni in Calabria, were due to be tested at the Spallanzani infectious diseases institute in Rome.
Amaretti on Tuesday denied media reports that he was presenting symptoms of hantavirus and that he would be transferred to Spallanzani.
“I’m fine, I have no symptoms, and I don’t know who spread the news,” he told La Repubblica newspaper.
"Federico is at home, well, and has not been, nor will he be, transferred to the Spallanzani Hospital", Villa San Giovanni Mayor Giusy Caminiti added.
Italian news agency Ansa on Wednesday reported that Amaretti and an Argentinian tourist hospitalised with pneumonia in Messina had both tested negative for hantavirus, attributing the update to the health ministry.
Health minister Orazio Schillaci in an interview published by La Repubblica on Wednesday said the government was “constantly monitoring the situation” and that the risk in Italy remains “very low”.
The ministry on Monday published a circular outlining Italy’s national response to the virus, which includes a mandatory 42-day quarantine for anyone who comes into close contact with a confirmed case.
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