Trump says hantavirus outbreak on cruise ship is under control

President Donald Trump said he had been briefed on the hantavirus cluster linked to the MV Hondius and described it as “very much, we hope, under control.” The reassurance came as international health agencies were still tracking a Dutch-flagged cruise ship that carried 147 passengers and crew and has now been tied to eight reported cases, including three deaths.

The World Health Organization said five of the eight cases had been confirmed as hantavirus, and identified the virus involved as Andes virus. That detail matters because Andes virus is the only hantavirus species known to allow limited human-to-human transmission through close and prolonged contact. WHO said the public-health risk was low, but warned that more cases could still surface because of the incubation period.

The outbreak began with a first known patient who developed symptoms on April 6, later died aboard the vessel, and whose wife also became ill and died after evacuation to South Africa, where laboratory testing confirmed hantavirus infection. Another passenger died on May 2, and one man remained in intensive care in South Africa while improving. WHO said the outbreak was not another COVID-19 and did not signal the start of a new pandemic, even as it continued to monitor the ship’s passengers and crew.

The response has spread well beyond the vessel itself. WHO said it deployed an expert on board, arranged shipment of 2,500 diagnostic kits from Argentina to laboratories in five countries, and was developing guidance for safe disembarkation and onward travel. U.S. health officials said the administration was closely monitoring American travelers on the ship and that the risk to the American public was extremely low. The State Department has led a coordinated, whole-of-government response with direct contact to passengers and diplomatic coordination.

The scale of the tracing effort shows why the warning has not ended with the first round of cases. Health officials in at least a dozen countries have been following passengers who dispersed worldwide after leaving the ship, while U.S. authorities have been monitoring travelers in at least three to five states. The outbreak also comes against a background of long-running U.S. surveillance: hantavirus monitoring began in 1993 after the Four Corners outbreak in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome became nationally notifiable in 1995, and the CDC says 890 laboratory-confirmed cases had been reported in the United States through the end of 2023.

The federal message of low risk is anchored in active tracing, lab testing and passenger follow-up, not in the idea that the outbreak has already disappeared.