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<\/a><\/p>\nPublished On 2 Jul 20262 Jul 2026<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization has declared the \u200chantavirus outbreak over after the last identified contact \u2060of an exposed person linked to a cruise ship completed quarantine and tested negative for the virus.<\/p>\n
The outbreak, which infected 13 people and killed three, \u200cinvolved \u2060the rare Andes hantavirus strain that typically circulates in \u2060Argentina and Chile. The cruise ship Hondius \u2060sailed from Argentina on \u2060April 1.<\/p>\n
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\u201cToday, the final contact of a person exposed to hantavirus on the cruise ship MV Hondius completed their quarantine period, tested negative and returned home,\u201d said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Thursday. \u201cNo further cases have been reported since the 25th of May. Therefore, WHO considers the hantavirus outbreak over,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
On April , the Dutch-flagged cruise ship set off from Ushuaia, Argentina, taking in remote islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, including Tristan da Cunha, before heading north to Tenerife in Spain\u2019s Canary Islands, where remaining passengers were flown home.<\/p>\n
The polar exploration ship finally docked in Rotterdam in the Netherlands on May 18.<\/p>\n
After cleaning and disinfection, the ship was cleared to put to sea again on May 30.<\/p>\n
Tedros said more than 650 contacts were identified and followed up by health authorities in 33 countries and territories.<\/p>\n
He said the WHO would continue working to understand the outbreak and the virus itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are also coordinating a study involving 21 countries to understand how the disease develops, which will support the development of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for future outbreaks,\u201d Tedros said.<\/p>\n
Hantavirus spreads primarily through rodents, infecting people through contact with rats, mice or their urine, droppings and saliva. The virus can become airborne during the cleaning of infested areas.<\/p>\n
The Andes virus is the only known hantavirus \u2060that can spread through close, prolonged human-to-human contact.<\/p>\n
Patients typically suffer fever, headache, muscle aches and gastrointestinal symptoms, such as nausea and abdominal pain between one and eight weeks after exposure.<\/p>\n
In severe cases, the illness can rapidly progress to coughing, shortness of breath and fluid accumulation in the lungs. There are no approved vaccines or targeted antiviral treatments for the disease, with care remaining largely supportive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WHO declares cruise-linked hantavirus outbreak over as final exposed individual completes quarantine and tests negative. Published On 2…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[591,59,102,632,50,56,54,158,55,3544,26582],"class_list":["post-672778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-europe","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-canada","tag-world-health-organization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}