On Friday, the World Health Organization moved to ease global anxiety over a rare hantavirus outbreak aboard the Dutch-flagged cruise ship MV Hondius, confirming that the general public faces only minimal risk of transmission even as multiple countries finalized plans to repatriate the vessel’s 150 trapped passengers and crew.
Three passengers on the Atlantic cruise have already died from the infection: a Dutch married couple and a German national. While the Andes virus, the only strain of hantavirus capable of limited person-to-person spread, has been confirmed among positive cases, WHO officials emphasized that the pathogen is far less transmissible than common respiratory viruses such as COVID-19.
“This is a dangerous virus, but only to the person who’s really infected, and the risk to the general population remains absolutely low,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters Friday. He added that emerging data from the outbreak has shown even cabin sharers have avoided transmission in multiple cases, a pattern that suggests the virus does not spread easily between people. “That shows you again, luckily, apparently, the virus is not that contagious that it easily jumps from person to person,” Lindmeier said.
As of Friday, the WHO recorded five confirmed cases and three suspected cases linked to the ship, with no active suspected infections remaining on board. One reassuring development came from contact tracing efforts launched after an infected passenger disembarked early: a KLM flight attendant who had been exposed to the infected passenger and developed mild symptoms tested negative for hantavirus, a result Lindmeier called “good news.”
The outbreak unfolded after the MV Hondius, a vessel often used for polar expeditions, departed Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 for a transatlantic cruise bound for Cape Verde. The first fatality and 30 other passengers disembarked at the remote British overseas territory of Saint Helena on April 24, with a connecting flight departing for Johannesburg the following day, triggering a worldwide contact tracing operation. The first fatality’s wife, who was removed from a Johannesburg-to-Amsterdam KLM flight before takeoff, later died in a South African hospital.
Three early cases, including two crew members who later tested positive, were evacuated from Cape Verde to the Netherlands for treatment. The ship has since sailed for the Spanish Canary Island of Tenerife, where it is expected to arrive early Sunday. Kasem Ibn Hattuta, a YouTuber traveling on the vessel, said passengers have maintained calm after medical personnel boarded to oversee the journey. “We finally left Cape Verde which was a relief for everyone on board, specially knowing that our sick colleagues are finally getting the medical care they need,” he said in a statement. “Everyone is keeping high spirit, people are smiling and taking the situation calmly,” adding that all passengers follow indoor masking and social distancing protocols.
Spanish authorities have confirmed the ship will anchor off the coast of Tenerife rather than docking at port, and all passengers will be ferried to the island’s airport for repatriation flights organized by their home countries. The United Kingdom has chartered a dedicated flight to repatriate its citizens, with the UK Health Security Agency confirming strict infection control measures will be enforced at every step of the process. British health officials also reported a suspected case on Tristan da Cunha, one of the world’s most remote inhabited islands with a population of roughly 250, which the ship visited during its voyage. U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday he had been briefed on the outbreak and added, “It’s very much, we hope, under control.”