WHO tracks deadly hantavirus outbreak tied to Antarctic cruise ship

Global health officials were racing to account for passengers and crew after a hantavirus cluster tied to the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius left three people dead and sent exposed travelers across several countries and airports.

The World Health Organization said the ship was carrying 147 passengers and crew, including 88 passengers and 59 crew members, when illness began surfacing between April 6 and April 28. As of May 4, WHO had identified seven cases in all, two laboratory-confirmed hantavirus infections and five suspected cases. The outbreak included three deaths, one critically ill patient and three people with mild symptoms. The vessel had departed Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1 on a voyage through the South Atlantic and Antarctic region and was moored off Cabo Verde by May 4 while authorities coordinated medical care, isolation, evacuation and laboratory work.

The confirmed cases included a 69-year-old Dutch woman who died in Johannesburg on April 26 after leaving the ship and a British passenger being treated in intensive care in Johannesburg. Her 69-year-old husband died on April 11 aboard the vessel after developing fever and respiratory symptoms. Dutch reporting also identified a deceased German woman among the suspected cases, and two crew members, one Dutch and one British, remained on the ship and required urgent medical care. WHO said the global risk remains low, but noted that limited human-to-human spread has been reported before with Andes virus, the hantavirus species linked to some outbreaks.

The case has become a stress test for post-pandemic cross-border disease tracking. WHO said contact tracing had been initiated for passengers on the Saint Helena-to-Johannesburg flight, while Oceanwide Expeditions said it was working to establish the whereabouts of everyone who disembarked in St. Helena on April 24, including six Americans. NBC News reported that 30 passengers left the ship in St. Helena without contact tracing, among them 11 people of other nationalities and two people of unknown nationality. U.S. state health authorities were tracking travelers who had returned to Arizona, Georgia and California.

The airline side of the investigation widened the net further. NBC News reported on May 7 that a flight attendant was being tested for hantavirus at a hospital in Amsterdam. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines said a Dutch woman who later died had briefly been on a Johannesburg-to-Amsterdam flight and was removed before takeoff. It was not clear whether the flight attendant was on that same flight. Even with those air-bridge checks under way, WHO said the episode still points to a low public-health risk overall, because hantavirus usually spreads through contact with infected rodents and person-to-person transmission is rare.