The voyage was marketed for explorers eager to venture to \u201cthe edges of the map,\u201d from Antarctica to some of the most remote islands in the world. <\/p>\n
It would be a tantalizing trip for tourists with an appetite for adventure \u2014 less about trips to the spa and lounging by the pool than a chance to see landscapes few humans have ever laid eyes upon. <\/p>\n
But this call of the wild was ultimately among the factors that turned the MV Hondius into the epicenter of the first-ever deadly outbreak of hantavirus aboard a modern cruise ship. Eleven cases have been linked to the outbreak so far. Three people are dead, and two others are in intensive care.<\/p>\n
The incident \u2014 with a few uncomfortable echoes<\/a> of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic \u2014 has sparked concerns and questions. Chief among them: Was this a freak occurrence, or a sign of things to come?<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s both,\u201d said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases expert at UC San Francisco. <\/p>\n Hantavirus had previously been an obscure illness. Typically spread through exposure to infected rodents\u2019 urine and droppings, it\u2019s notoriously difficult to diagnose and has no specified antiviral treatment. It was definitively identified relatively recently, in a field rodent near the Hantan River in South Korea in 1978, and finally explained the mystery cause of the \u201cKorean hemorrhagic fever\u201d that infected thousands of United Nations troops during the Korean War. <\/p>\n Though rare, the disease has drawn attention in the U.S. over the decades due to its incredibly high case-fatality rate: up to 50% among the strains that circulate in the Americas.<\/p>\n Western Hemisphere hantavirus strains are so deadly because they can attack the lungs and make them leak. The strains that circulate in Asia and Europe \u2014 where hantavirus is more common, and generally less deadly \u2014 attack the kidneys. <\/p>\n Those who are severely ill can only be treated by putting them on life-support machines that directly add oxygen to their blood.<\/p>\n Despite its severity, the overall impact of the disease in the Americas has remained muted for two main reasons. First, most strains of hantavirus do not spread directly from person to person. And second, many people will not come into contact with rodents carrying the virus during their daily lives. <\/p>\n Excursions that attract people like those aboard the MV Hondius, however, blur the second line. Launched in 2019, the ice-strengthened vessel offered passengers opportunities for \u201cmaximum contact with the nature and wildlife you traveled so far to see,\u201d according to its operator, Oceanwide Expeditions. <\/p>\n \u201cThe broader pattern is definitely not random,\u201d Chin-Hong said, \u201cwhich is more expedition tourism visiting remote areas.\u201d Climate change, he added, is also increasing the range of certain infectious diseases. <\/p>\n \u201cThe hantavirus in the cruise ship is unprecedented, and reflects kind of like a perfect storm of the expedition cruise through a remote area, environmental exposure potentially during a short excursion, and the hantavirus \u2014 this particular Andes virus \u2014 being capable of going from person to person,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Andes virus, which circulates in Argentina and Chile and is mainly spread among the long-tailed pygmy rice rat, is the only hantavirus strain known to be able to transmit from human to human.<\/p>\n Such inter-person spread occurred previously in a deadly outbreak in Argentina. From November 2018 through February 2019, the Andes virus infected 34 people there, killing 11, according to a study<\/a> in the New England Journal of Medicine. <\/p>\n There were 149 passengers and staff aboard the MV Hondius when the ship publicly disclosed<\/a> that three of its passengers had died. Of the 18 U.S. citizens on the ship, one passenger<\/a> initially tested positive for hantavirus overseas but also got a negative test result; a follow-up test is now being done in the U.S., and results are expected in a day or so, Dr. David Fitter, incident manager for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s hantavirus response, told reporters in a briefing Wednesday.<\/p>\n That patient, who is not ill, is being monitored at a biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.<\/p>\n Five California residents have been potentially exposed to the virus<\/a> \u2014 four aboard the cruise ship, and the fifth while on a plane with an infected person in South Africa. All five are asymptomatic and appear healthy, the California Department of Public Health said Wednesday. <\/p>\n Most infected people actually don\u2019t seem to spread the Andes virus, Chin-Hong said. But some do end up being \u201csuperspreaders,\u201d infecting others at exceptional rates. <\/p>\n That\u2019s what happened in 2018-19. A single person got the Andes virus from a rodent, and the outbreak was spread mainly by three sick people who attended crowded social events, the medical journal study said \u2014 including a birthday party and a wake for one of the hantavirus victims. <\/p>\n In the case of the MV Hondius, the first person believed to have contracted the hantavirus was a man from the Netherlands who was possibly exposed to rodents while bird-watching<\/a> prior to boarding the ship before it left for its transatlantic journey, according to authorities. He had spent the prior three months traveling through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, the World Health Organization said. The man boarded the ship on April 1, developed symptoms on April 6 and died on board on April 11. <\/p>\n \u201cAt present, the thought is that it was an ornithologist who was visiting a dump,<\/a> where many rare birds congregate, and was exposed to a rodent that was in the garbage dump,\u201d said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional physician chief of infectious diseases for Kaiser Permanente Southern California. <\/p>\n From there, she said, the realities of cruising at sea set the stage. <\/p>\n \u201cCruise ships are a perfect environment for the spread of infectious diseases, unfortunately,\u201d Hudson said. \u201cYou have a population of people who are living together in a relatively small and confined space, with most folks spending a good part of their time indoors eating and socializing. This means that if there\u2019s an infection that can spread easily from person to person, the very nature of the cruise ship allows this to happen more readily.\u201d<\/p>\n It can also be difficult to isolate sick people aboard a cruise ship. The MV Hondius\u2019 doctor fell ill with hantavirus, as did another crew member who was working as a guide. Among the symptoms people reported were gastrointestinal illness, fever, general malaise, pneumonia, fatigue, aches and respiratory symptoms.<\/p>\n Extensive spread of the hantavirus outbreak is not expected, health experts say. Unlike COVID-19, the Andes virus is much harder to transmit from person to person.<\/p>\n In past outbreaks of the Andes virus, taking steps like isolating people who are sick \u2014 and asking those who aren\u2019t sick but have been exposed to stay away from others \u2014 have brought outbreaks to an end. <\/p>\n It can take up to six weeks from the time a person has been exposed to the virus to the onset of illness. That \u201ctakes us to the 21st of June,\u201d WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news briefing Tuesday. \u201cWHO\u2019s recommendation is that they should be monitored actively at a specified quarantine facility or at home for 42 days from the last exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n One Californian who was on the MV Hondius, but left the ship before the hantavirus outbreak was discovered, is back home in Santa Clara County and remains healthy. That person is being asked to limit trips outside the home during the 42-day period to see if they become ill, according to Dr. Erica Pan, director of the California Department of Public Health.<\/p>\n Another Californian, from Sacramento County, is also back at home after sitting within a couple of seats of a hantavirus-infected passenger who was briefly on a flight from South Africa to the Netherlands before being asked to deplane due to her illness. The Californian remains healthy, but is also being asked to limit activities with others. <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not to share a bed with someone else. … They shouldn\u2019t attend social events, and they should not visit any crowded venues,\u201d Pan said.<\/p>\n Two other Californians who were on board the MV Hondius are healthy and are being observed at the University of Nebraska Medical Center\u2019s National Quarantine Unit, the only federally funded quarantine unit in the U.S. Thirteen others are also being observed there, while two are at Emory University in Atlanta.<\/p>\n The California Department of Public Health said it didn\u2019t know when the Californians in Nebraska would return home. <\/p>\n California health officials Wednesday said that there was a fifth state resident who was potentially exposed to the hantavirus. That person left the cruise ship, returned briefly to California, then left for additional travel, all before the outbreak was announced. <\/p>\n That person, who remains healthy, is now in the remote Pitcairn Islands in the south Pacific Ocean \u2014 halfway between Peru and New Zealand.<\/p>\n Despite concerns surrounding this latest outbreak, the Andes virus is considered a poor candidate to become the next pandemic. One thing that makes COVID spread so easily is that people can infect others even if they\u2019re not personally experiencing symptoms. <\/p>\n With COVID, people could get sick just by breathing in aerosolized viral particles<\/a> floating around and pushed across an entire room by an air conditioning vent. <\/p>\n With the Andes virus, by contrast, people probably need to be symptomatic to spread illness. <\/p>\n The 2018-19 Andes virus outbreak in Argentina also showed that close contact is needed for transmission, including \u201cbeing seated very close\u201d to the sick person, Chin-Hong said.<\/p>\n Those at highest risk of getting hantavirus from another human have \u201csome direct exposure to bodily fluids,\u201d Pan said. <\/p>\n The first U.S. case of Andes virus <\/a>actually occurred in January 2018, in a woman who had stayed in cabins and youth hostels in the Andes region of Argentina and Chile. She did not infect anyone else after her return despite taking two commercial flights in the U.S. when sick and before she was hospitalized in Delaware. She eventually recovered at home. <\/p>\n More morbidly, health experts note, the Andes virus is also too deadly for it to spread rapidly in a pandemic situation.<\/p>\n So why are we seeing this outbreak now? <\/p>\n Hantavirus appears to be expanding its range in Argentina. A report<\/a> published in December noted that hantavirus\u2019 range in that country was moving southward. <\/p>\n \u201cThis redistribution indicates either ecological shifts affecting rodent reservoir populations, increased human encroachment into previously untouched habitats, or improved surveillance detecting cases in areas with lower historical awareness,\u201d said the report, published by the Biothreats Emergence, Analysis and Communications Network, or BEACON, based at Boston University\u2019s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. <\/p>\n From mid-June through early November, there were 23 confirmed cases in the country, with nine deaths. No human-to-human transmission was reported during that time period. <\/p>\n