Countries worldwide are scrambling to trace people who had left the cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak before it got marooned off the coast of Cape Verde, to prevent further spread of the disease.
Three people – a Dutch couple and a German national – died in the outbreak on the MV Hondius. Five of the eight suspected cases have now been confirmed, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said at a press briefing on Thursday.
The wider public health threat from the outbreak remained low, director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that the WHO was aware of reports of other patients and there may be more cases due to the long incubation period of the virus.
Dr Abdirahman Mahamud, director at the alert and response co-ordination department of the WHO’s emergencies health programme, highlighted a similar outbreak in Argentina in 2018/19 which led to 34 cases.
He said: “If we follow public health measures, and the lessons we learned from Argentina are shared across all countries … we can break this chain of transmission and this doesn’t need to be a large epidemic.”
Mahamud added: “We don’t anticipate a large epidemic. With experience our member states have, and the actions they have taken, we believe that this will not lead to subsequent chain of transmission.”
The WHO is working with health authorities in South Africa to trace contacts of the two cases of hantavirus in the country, which includes one British person who is still in intensive care there.
WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Photograph: Getty Images
The Dutch government has said about 40 passengers had disembarked the ship in St Helena, where the ship made a stop on its way to Cape Verde – before the outbreak was reported.
The whereabouts of many of these passengers is as yet unknown.
One of those to disembark was the wife of the Dutchman who had died aboard the ship on April 11th. She fell sick herself and died before she could reach the Netherlands.
Dutch airline KLM on Wednesday said it had taken the woman off a plane in Johannesburg on April 25th due to her deteriorating medical condition.
According to broadcaster RTL, a KLM stewardess who had been in contact with her has now been admitted to a hospital in Amsterdam after showing possible symptoms of a hantavirus infection.
The Dutch health ministry did not mention her job or who she may have been in contact with, but did confirm that a Dutch woman has been admitted to hospital and will be tested to determine whether she is infected with the hantavirus.
A spokesperson for KLM said the company could not “discuss individual cases” due to privacy concerns.
The virus found in the victims has been confirmed as the Andean strain, which can spread among humans through very close contact.
[ What is hantavirus, can it spread and what are the symptoms?Opens in new window ]
Experts have stressed that contagion is very rare and requires very close contact, but the outbreak has put health authorities on high alert. The United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it was closely monitoring the situation with US travellers on board the ship, adding that the risk to the American public was extremely low at the time.
One French citizen has been in contact with a person who had fallen ill but was not currently showing symptoms, French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot said.
Argentina’s health ministry has said it will carry out rodent trapping and analysis in the southern city of Ushuaia, the origin point of the cruise ship.
Officials and experts in Argentina are seeking to determine whether their country is the source of the deadly outbreak. Argentina, where the cruise to Antarctica departed, is consistently ranked by the WHO as having the highest incidence of the rare, rodent-borne disease in Latin America. Investigators there are working to contact trace the source of contamination.
The Argentinian health ministry on Tuesday reported 101 hantavirus infections since June 2025, roughly double to the previous year.
The Andes strain of the hantavirus can cause a severe and often fatal lung disease called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. The disease led to death in nearly a third of cases in the last year, Argentina’s health ministry said.
Argentina on Wednesday said it was sending genetic material from the Andes virus and testing equipment to help Spain, Senegal, South Africa, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom detect it.
The Luxembourg Air Rescue plane landed in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on Wednesday evening. Photograph: Luxembourg Air Rescue crew
People usually become infected with hantavirus through contact with infected rodents or their urine, their droppings or their saliva, and human-to-human transmission is rare. But a limited spread among close contacts has been observed in some previous outbreaks with the Andes strain.
Argentinian officials say they’re trying to pin down where infected passengers travelled in the country before boarding the Dutch-flagged cruise liner in Ushuaia, a city in southern Argentina known as the end of the world. Once they know the itineraries, they plan to trace contacts, isolate close contacts and actively monitor to prevent further spread.
Before boarding, the Dutch couple went sightseeing in Ushuaia, and travelled in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, the Argentinian government said.
The virus can incubate for between one and eight weeks, making it hard to know whether the passengers contracted the virus before leaving Argentina for Antarctica on April 1st; during a scheduled stop to a remote South Atlantic island; or on-board.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO, said earlier on X that the “WHO continues to work with the ship’s operators to closely monitor the health of passengers and crew, working with countries to support appropriate medical follow-up and evacuation where needed”.
“Monitoring and follow-up for passengers on-board and for those who have already disembarked has been initiated in collaboration with the ship’s operators and national health authorities,” he added. “At this stage, the overall public health risk remains low.”
The evacuation of three passengers from the ship, with close to 150 people on-board, means it can now continue on its three-day journey to the Canary Islands after Spanish authorities gave permission for the vessel to dock. But a row has erupted, with the president of the Canary Islands expressing concern over the ship docking in Tenerife.
The ship was anchored off Cape Verde while arrangements were put in place to evacuate the crew members but on Wednesday evening the ship was on its way to the Canary Islands.
Those evacuated on Wednesday include a British man, Martin Anstee (56), who was an expedition guide on-board the ship. He was removed from the vessel along with a Dutch colleague (41), who was the ship’s doctor, and a 65-year-old German passenger, the Telegraph reported.
The health emergency aboard the MV Hondius comes as local public health researchers in Argentina point to climate change accelerating the risk of the spread of hantavirus.
Public heath experts say higher temperatures expand the virus’s range because, in part, as it gets warmer and ecosystems change, rodents that carry the hantavirus can thrive in more places.
“Argentina has become more tropical because of climate change, and that has brought disruptions, like dengue and yellow fever, but also new tropical plants that produce seeds for mice to proliferate,” said Hugo Pizzi, a prominent Argentinian infectious disease specialist. “There is no doubt that as time goes by, the hantavirus is spreading more and more.” – Guardian/Associated Press/Reuters