The World Health Organization announced Thursday that eight cases of hantavirus (including three confirmed and five suspected cases) have been confirmed among personnel aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius. Health authorities around the world are scrambling to track and contain the outbreak.
The ship carrying the remaining passengers is en route to Spain’s Canary Islands, and its arrival is under increased scrutiny.
The ship’s operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, announced on Thursday that two seriously ill passengers who had been evacuated from the ship had arrived in the Netherlands for treatment. A third evacuee, who is currently asymptomatic, is also being treated there, the company said.
The evacuated passengers were a British national, a 65-year-old German national, and a 41-year-old Dutch crew member.
Three people, a Dutch couple and a German, have died since the ship left Argentina last month.
A Dutch government spokesperson told CNN on Thursday that a woman went to a hospital in Amsterdam for testing following a possible exposure related to the ship. According to Dutch media, she was a flight attendant for KLM Airlines and had contact with a 69-year-old Dutch woman who died in South Africa last month.
The outbreak is believed to be related to the Andean strain of hantavirus, a rare but potentially serious virus that can be transmitted between humans through close contact in some cases.
South African health authorities said laboratory tests had identified the Andes strain in two confirmed cases linked to the ship, and contact tracing was underway, Reuters reported.
On Wednesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said a passenger who returned to Switzerland after disembarking had tested positive and was being treated in Zurich.
“The patient was responding to an email from the ship’s operator informing passengers of the health hazard,” he said.
In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive announced that two British nationals who disembarked the ship early in the voyage were quarantined at home as a precautionary measure after potentially being infected.
Meanwhile, U.S. health officials said they were monitoring three people who had previously disembarked and returned home. Georgia state officials said two residents are under observation and are not showing symptoms, while Arizona health officials said none of them are asymptomatic. Medpage Today reported that other American passengers returned to Texas and Virginia.
The situation has attracted international attention, with some comparing it to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as passengers disembarked and dispersed across multiple countries before the outbreak was fully understood. But health officials stress there is no evidence of widespread infection risk.
“We are working with relevant countries to support international contact tracing to ensure potentially infected people are monitored and to limit further spread of the disease,” the WHO said in a social media post.
Meanwhile, Spain’s Canary Islands is preparing to receive the remaining passengers from the MV Hondius this weekend.
Canary Islands authorities said on Thursday that the ship would not berth in port but would remain offshore after Tenerife dockworkers warned they had not been given clear instructions on how to handle the ship or what safeguards would be put in place. Passengers will be ferried to a secure area of the port and then transferred directly to the airport for repatriation, President Fernando Clavijo and Health Minister Monica García said.
The ship is expected to arrive in Tenerife on Sunday, Garcia said.
CNN’s Pau Mosquera, Brenda Goodman and Vasco Cotobio contributed reporting.
