THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Dutch government officials confirmed new details Thursday that add greater urgency to the global contact-tracing effort underway after a deadly hantavirus outbreak spread aboard an international cruise ship. Roughly 40 passengers left the vessel at the remote South Atlantic British territory of St. Helena following the death of the first recorded victim, a disclosure that the cruise operator had not made publicly until now.
Among the passengers who disembarked at St. Helena was the wife of a Dutch man who lost his life to the virus. As previously confirmed by the cruise line, the woman accompanied her husband’s body off the ship before boarding a commercial flight to South Africa. Shortly after arriving in Johannesburg, she collapsed at the city’s airport and later died from the infection.
This new confirmation that dozens of other passengers also left the ship at the South Atlantic stopover upends earlier incomplete information released by the cruise company, which had not acknowledged any additional disembarkations beyond the Dutch woman and her late husband. Contact-tracing teams across South Africa and multiple European nations have now launched urgent efforts to locate and monitor every passenger who got off the ship during the stop, to slow further spread of the virus.
One case already linked to the outbreak has been confirmed outside of the vessel: on Wednesday, health authorities in Switzerland announced that a man who also disembarked at St. Helena and traveled back to Europe has tested positive for hantavirus. The full details of his travel route and interactions since leaving the ship have not yet been finalized by investigators.
Dutch authorities have so far declined to share any information about the current locations of the other 39 passengers who got off at St. Helena, leaving public health teams scrambling to track down the potentially exposed group across the globe.
Additional evacuation efforts have continued in recent days as the death toll from the outbreak has climbed. According to the cruise operator, a British passenger was medically evacuated from the ship to South Africa via Ascension Island just days after the first death was recorded. On Wednesday, three more people – including the cruise ship’s lead doctor – were pulled from the vessel off the coast of Cape Verde and airlifted to Europe for urgent medical care.
As of the latest update, three passengers have died from the hantavirus infection, with multiple other people remaining sick with the disease aboard the ship and in medical facilities across multiple continents.
About 40 passengers previously left ship hit by Hantavirus outbreak at island of St. Helena
