分类： health

A deadly hantavirus outbreak has left more than 100 passengers and crew stranded aboard the expedition cruise vessel MV Hondius off the coast of Cape Verde, triggering an urgent multinational response to evacuate those infected and repatriate hundreds of stranded travelers, including 23 British nationals. Three passengers have died from the virus since the ship departed Argentina on a voyage one month ago, making this one of the most serious infectious disease outbreaks on a commercial passenger vessel in recent years.

According to official data released Tuesday by cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions, 19 passengers and four crew members on board are British citizens. Among those affected, a 56-year-old British doctor was among three symptomatic people evacuated from the vessel Wednesday for urgent medical care, and UK officials have confirmed the doctor is currently in stable condition. The other two evacuees include a 41-year-old Dutch crew member and a 65-year-old German passenger, who were also flown to receive treatment in the Netherlands, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper issued an official statement Wednesday acknowledging the severity of the crisis, saying, “This situation is very serious and deeply stressful for those affected and their families.” She added that the UK Foreign Office is working around the clock to bring all stranded British citizens home safely, with consular teams maintaining direct, ongoing contact with all UK nationals on board the vessel.

After days of diplomatic negotiation and public health coordination, Spanish authorities granted the vessel permission to dock at the Granadilla port on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, despite initial public health concerns raised by local officials. Spain’s Health Minister Mónica García confirmed Wednesday that once the ship docks, all passengers will be disembarked for processing. Spanish citizens will be transferred to Madrid for mandatory quarantine, while asymptomatic passengers from other countries will be cleared for repatriation to their home nations.

As of Thursday, approximately 150 people remain on the MV Hondius, held under strict precautionary isolation and infection control measures implemented by the cruise line. Investigators have not yet identified the origin of the outbreak, and it remains unclear whether any individuals outside the ship’s passenger and crew complement have contracted the virus.

The UK’s response to the incident is being led by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which is working in close partnership with the WHO and health authorities across several Atlantic territories including St Helena, Tristan da Cunha and Ascension Island to implement isolation protocols, contact tracing and coordinated response planning. A UK Foreign Office spokesperson emphasized that the core priority of the operation is to ensure all British nationals can return home safely while maintaining full public health protections to prevent further spread of the virus.

For the general public in the UK, the UKHSA has stressed that the overall risk of widespread hantavirus transmission remains very low, and there is no cause for undue public concern. Hantaviruses are a family of pathogens primarily carried by rodent populations including mice and rats, with human infection most commonly occurring through exposure to contaminated rodent excreta. Common symptoms of infection include high fever, extreme fatigue, widespread muscle pain, abdominal discomfort, nausea and vomiting, and in severe cases the virus can cause life-threatening respiratory or kidney complications.

Multilateral coordination continues to advance the repatriation process, with UK officials working closely with Spanish, Dutch and other national governments to facilitate medical evacuations and speed the safe return of all stranded travelers.

In an ongoing developing public health emergency, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced Wednesday that three patients with suspected hantavirus infection have been evacuated from the Dutch-flagged cruise ship MV Hondius, which is currently stranded off the coast of Cape Verde, and are en route to the Netherlands for further medical care.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed Wednesday that the United Nations’ leading health body is collaborating closely with the cruise line’s operators to track the health status of all remaining 150 passengers and crew members currently onboard the vessel. In a public post to his X social media account, Tedros emphasized that “At this stage, the overall public health risk remains low.”

The MV Hondius departed Argentina on April 1 for an Atlantic cruise that was originally scheduled to include stops in Antarctica, the Falkland Islands and other regional destinations. The trip quickly turned into a public health crisis when three passengers died from confirmed hantavirus infection, with at least five additional people reporting symptomatic infection to date. Three cases have received full laboratory confirmation so far.

Genetic sequencing conducted by public health officials in South Africa and Switzerland has identified the pathogen as the Andes strain of hantavirus, a variant native to South America that is extremely rare for its limited ability to spread between humans. Unlike most hantavirus strains, which only spread to humans through contact with contaminated rodent droppings, experts note that Andes hantavirus can pass between people through prolonged close contact such as cohabitation or shared food, though such transmission events remain uncommon.

Two of the confirmed cases were first identified by South African health authorities after the passengers were evacuated to the country for treatment. One of those patients, a British national, remains in intensive care at a South African hospital, while the other tested positive posthumously after dying shortly after arriving in the country. A third confirmed case was reported Wednesday by Swiss public health officials: a man who returned from the cruise to Switzerland at the end of April, who tested positive for Andes hantavirus after seeking care at the University Hospital Zurich upon learning of the outbreak from the cruise operator. He has been placed in isolation for treatment, and his wife, who has not developed symptoms, is self-isolating as a preventive measure. Swiss officials have stressed there is currently no broader risk to the general public in Switzerland.

After the outbreak was declared, the MV Hondius anchored off the coast of Cape Verde, a small Atlantic island nation off the west coast of Africa, while global health authorities coordinated a response. On Tuesday, Spain’s Health Ministry announced it had approved a request from WHO and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control to allow the vessel to dock in the Canary Islands for disembarkation and further care.

However, local political leaders in the Canary Islands have pushed back against the plan. Regional president Fernando Clavijo told local radio station Onda Cero Wednesday that he shares significant concerns about the risk the vessel’s arrival could pose to local residents, and has requested an urgent meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to address the situation. “Neither the populace nor the government of the Canary Islands can rest assured because it is clear that the danger to the population is real,” Clavijo said.

All remaining passengers currently onboard the vessel are isolating in their individual cabins to reduce the risk of further transmission, per WHO guidance. Medical evacuation teams were on standby Wednesday in the Cape Verde capital of Praia, ready to conduct further evacuations if needed. On Tuesday night, Associated Press reporters on the scene observed a boat approach the stricken vessel before turning back shortly after, though it remains unclear what the mission was and whether the attempt to evacuate patients was aborted.

As this is a breaking public health event, authorities continue to update response plans and case counts as more information becomes available.

A rare, deadly hantavirus outbreak has swept through an Antarctic expedition cruise over the past month, leaving three passengers dead and multiple others ill, according to official updates from the World Health Organization (WHO), the vessel’s operator, and global ship tracking data.

The MV Hondius, operated by Dutch expedition cruise firm Oceanwide Expeditions, departed Ushuaia in southern Argentina on April 1 on a planned month-long voyage that would carry 149 passengers and crew from 23 nations to Antarctica and remote South Atlantic islands. These premium expedition trips, which target travelers seeking to visit some of Earth’s most isolated wilderness regions, cost between $6,000 and $25,000 per passenger, depending on cabin selection.

The first case emerged just five days into the voyage, when a 70-year-old Dutch passenger developed a fever, headache, and mild diarrhea on April 6. His condition deteriorated rapidly, and he died from respiratory distress on April 21 while the ship was traversing the open South Atlantic between the British overseas territories of South Georgia and Saint Helena. At the time, no clear cause of death could be identified on board, so the cruise continued its planned itinerary.

The vessel stopped near the remote island of Tristan da Cunha before reaching Saint Helena on April 24, where the passenger’s body was disembarked. The man’s 69-year-old wife, who had already started showing early symptoms of illness, left the ship to accompany her husband’s remains and boarded a commercial flight bound for South Africa. She grew critically ill mid-flight and collapsed upon landing in Johannesburg, dying in a local hospital on April 26.

After the ship left Saint Helena bound for Ascension Island, located 800 miles north of its previous stop, a third British passenger developed symptoms including high fever, shortness of breath, and pneumonia. He was evacuated from Ascension Island to a South African hospital for intensive care on April 27. A fourth passenger, a German woman, developed pneumonia-like symptoms and died on board on May 6, after the ship had altered course for Cape Verde off the West African coast. Her body remains in isolation on the vessel.

It took nearly three weeks from the first death for health officials to confirm hantavirus as the cause of the outbreak. After all routine tests on the hospitalized British passenger returned negative, South African public health labs ran a hantavirus analysis, which returned a positive result on May 6. Posthumous testing of the Dutch woman’s body returned a second positive hantavirus result the following day. As of the latest update, two cases are laboratory-confirmed, and WHO has classified the event as a full hantavirus outbreak, suspecting the other fatalities are also linked to the virus.

Currently, the MV Hondius is anchored off the coast of Cape Verde, with three symptomatic people still on board waiting for evacuation. The hospitalized British patient remains in intensive care in South Africa.

Hantavirus is primarily a rodent-borne pathogen, spread to humans through direct contact with infected rodents, their saliva, urine, or fecal droppings. While person-to-person transmission is extremely rare for most hantavirus strains, the Andes hantavirus — the specific variant identified in this outbreak, which is endemic to Argentina and Chile — can spread between humans in rare cases. In severe infections, hantavirus causes life-threatening respiratory failure and kidney damage, with a high mortality rate for serious cases.

International health authorities have stressed that the global risk from this outbreak remains very low, due to the virus’s limited ability to spread between people. WHO officials are currently conducting contact tracing for all passengers who shared the April 25 flight from Saint Helena to Johannesburg with the infected Dutch woman, to monitor for any secondary spread. The ship’s passengers and crew have been placed in full cabin isolation with strict physical distancing protocols, a measure that mirrors lockdown measures implemented widely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As of Tuesday, Oceanwide Expeditions announced plans to deploy medical evacuation aircraft to Cape Verde to extract three people from the ship: two passengers requiring urgent medical care and one companion of the deceased German woman. The evacuated passengers will be flown to the Netherlands for care, though an exact arrival timeline has not been released. After the evacuation, the MV Hondius will sail approximately three days to the Spanish Canary Islands, though Spanish officials have not yet finalized their approval for the vessel’s port of entry as of Tuesday evening.

Investigations into the source of the outbreak remain ongoing. WHO officials are reviewing the travel histories of the first two infected passengers, who visited Argentina and other parts of South America before boarding the expedition cruise, to determine how the virus was introduced to the vessel.

A luxury expedition cruise that began as a dream Atlantic voyage has devolved into a deadly, uncertain quarantine, leaving roughly 150 passengers and crew from 23 countries stranded in waters off the coast of West Africa after a hantavirus outbreak claimed three lives.

The MV Hondius, operated by Netherlands-based expedition company Oceanwide Expeditions, departed Ushuaia, Argentina — the world’s southernmost city — on April 1 on a highly anticipated itinerary that would take guests past dramatic, untapped Atlantic landscapes. The route included stops at South Georgia, the remote British overseas territory famous for its massive penguin colonies, and Tristan da Cunha, the most remote inhabited island on Earth. For weeks, passengers documented the once-in-a-lifetime trip on social media: American travel vlogger Jake Rosmarin shared clips of alpine snowfall, vibrant autumn coastal hues, penguin-spotting excursions, and leisurely iced lattes on deck, calling the quiet moments at remote ports unforgettable.

That idyllic narrative unraveled rapidly in mid-April. On April 11, a Dutch passenger died on board with no clear cause of death. His remains were offloaded in St Helena nearly two weeks later, and his 69-year-old wife, who accompanied the body, was evacuated to a Johannesburg hospital in South Africa, where she also died. The World Health Organization (WHO) later confirmed she had been infected with hantavirus, a rare but serious infectious disease most commonly transmitted to humans by rodent populations. A British passenger fell ill on April 27 and was also evacuated to South Africa, where they remain in critical but stable condition after testing positive for the virus. A third fatality, a German national, was recorded on May 2, bringing the total death toll to three; health officials have not yet confirmed if the German victim died from hantavirus. Currently, two crew members are experiencing acute respiratory symptoms consistent with the virus, one mild and one severe, requiring urgent medical intervention. In total, health authorities have confirmed two cases of hantavirus on board and are investigating five additional suspected cases, with WHO warning the virus may have spread among the vessel’s population.

Today, the stricken vessel remains anchored off Cape Verde, after local authorities declined entry to the port earlier this week. Passengers have described divided moods on board, with conflicting accounts of the crisis shared on social media. In an emotional viral TikTok posted to his followers, Rosmarin, who first brought widespread attention to the outbreak, spoke through tears about the fear and uncertainty gripping many on board. “We’re not just a story. We’re not just headlines, we’re people with families, with lives, with people waiting for us at home,” he said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty and that is the hardest part. All we want right now is to feel safe, to have clarity and to get home.”

In subsequent posts, Rosmarin clarified he had settled his emotions, noting that he remained healthy, was getting regular fresh air, and was well cared for by the ship’s crew. “I’m just trying to focus on the positive,” he added.

Another travel influencer and passenger, Kasem Hato, pushed back on widespread media coverage of the crisis, arguing the situation has been overblown. Hato claimed the intense public attention stemmed from Rosmarin’s viral panicked video, noting that “148 out of 149” people on board have remained calm, and that the outbreak is under control. “While his reaction is valid, it doesn’t represent the situation on board,” Hato wrote, adding that passengers are passing the time with reading, film screenings, and social activities, and wished ill passengers a quick recovery. Cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions has echoed this framing, saying the overall atmosphere on board remains calm, with most passengers composed. The company said it is working urgently to secure a docking port, expedite disembarkation, and complete required medical screenings for all guests.

Footage from inside the vessel confirms new public health protocols are in place: passengers are required to maintain social distance, wear face coverings in indoor common areas, and practice frequent hand sanitization. Usually bustling communal spaces, including plush lounges designed for evening socializing, now sit empty. One anonymous passenger told the BBC the group is preparing for at least three to four more days at sea, with no clear timeline for when they will be able to dock.

The vessel’s next destination remains shrouded in confusion. WHO initially announced Spain had granted permission for the MV Hondius to dock in the Canary Islands, where officials could conduct a full risk assessment and ongoing medical monitoring. But Spain’s Ministry of Health has pushed back on that reporting, saying it has not yet received a formal request for the vessel to enter Canarian ports. A ministry spokesperson added that Spanish authorities stand ready to take over management of the situation if a request is submitted, including providing medical care, diagnostic testing, and vessel disinfection, though they would not confirm whether passengers would be allowed to disembark once docked.

Hantavirus, which primarily spreads through contact with rodent urine, droppings, or saliva, can cause severe respiratory and cardiovascular illness in humans, with a mortality rate of roughly 36% for the most common strain found in the Americas. Person-to-person transmission is rare, though not impossible, according to global health guidelines.