U.S. monitoring hantavirus cruise passengers; dozens left ship after 1st death – NBC News

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Health officials in at least a dozen countries, including the U.S., are tracking dozens of passengers who traveled aboard the cruise ship at the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak.
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Those passengers have dispersed across the world and were in five states as of Thursday afternoon: Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas and Virginia. Health officials in those states said the former passengers, who are not being publicly identified, have not shown any symptoms.
Despite the widening international response, World Health Organization officials say the outbreak is not the start of a new pandemic or epidemic.
“While this is a serious incident, WHO assesses the public health risk as low,” Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement Thursday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said it and the State Department are closely monitoring the status of Americans on the ship, adding that “risk to the American public is extremely low.”
A passenger still on board the ship described the general mood as calm now that travelers who were exposed have connected with doctors.
“Everyone is keeping high spirit, people are smiling and taking the situation calmly,” passenger Kasem Ibn Hattuta said in an email Thursday.
Medical teams have boarded the cruise, Hattuta added, which is contributing to a sense of normalcy after days of worry and concern.
“I’ve seen several people walking on the outer decks breathing fresh air and some birders trying to spot the different seabirds on the way, but everyone is wearing masks specially when inside the ship and keeping a safe distance,” Hattuta said.
Those who remain on the MV Hondius are being asked to stay in their cabins, the WHO said. Cabins are being disinfected, and anyone who shows symptoms will be isolated.
So far, the people still on the vessel have not shown any symptoms.
Dr. Stephen Kornfeld, a passenger, said that when the ship’s doctor became ill, he had to step in.
“As things deteriorated and more people got sick and more got seriously ill, I ended up just taking over and trying to keep everybody going,” he told news station KTVZ of Oregon.
Kornfeld said the situation has improved since patients were evacuated.
“Fortunately, nobody else has gotten sick in the last six to seven days,” the doctor said, adding that other experts have come on board.
“We now have two World Health Organization epidemiologists on the boat. We have two Dutch infectious disease people on the boat. So there’s a lot of medical coverage now. “
Dr. Martin Kriz, who has worked on the MV Hondius and its sister ship, said self-isolating aboard a small cruise of that size is nearly impossible because of shared spaces including lounges and dining rooms.
“You can’t do much if you’re far from land,” Kriz said. “You do what you can do.”
Cruise ships typically follow a three-tiered protocol for handling infectious outbreaks, he added. The first involves passengers wearing masks, and the highest level calls for passengers to isolate.
Weeks after the first death on April 11, 29 passengers disembarked on the remote Atlantic island St. Helena without undergoing contact tracing, cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said in a statement. The dead person was also removed from the vessel.
The company said it was “working to establish” the whereabouts of all those who disembarked April 24 in St. Helena and had contacted all of them. It said the number included six Americans.
Three people aboard the luxury cruise have died. There are five confirmed cases and three suspected infections, according to the WHO.
One person who was on board the MV Hondius is at home in Arizona, another is in Virginia, two are in Georgia, two are in Texas, and an unknown number are back in California, according to authorities in those states. None have reported symptoms of the rare virus, which has an incubation period of up to six weeks. Officials say the risk to the public remains low.
The outbreak is believed to have started following a birdwatching expedition from Argentina to Cape Verde.
According to the company, 114 guests were aboard the ship on April 1 following departure from Ushuaia, Argentina. On April 15, six additional guests joined at Tristan da Cunha, between Ushuaia and St. Helena, bringing the total to 120. At this time, the deceased passenger is included in the tally.
The passengers who left the boat comprise 12 nationalities; the home countries of two people are unknown.
Dutch officials said Thursday that a hospitalized flight attendant who was not a passenger was being tested for hantavirus in the Netherlands.
“I can confirm that a stewardess is in hospital now and she is being tested for the virus,” a spokesperson for the Dutch Health Ministry said. The department did not say whether she was ill or showing symptoms of the virus, which is rare but potentially deadly.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines said Wednesday that a Dutch woman who died after she contracted hantavirus was “briefly” on a flight from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Amsterdam and was removed from the plane before takeoff.
It is not clear whether the flight attendant was on the same flight. KLM said in a statement it does not comment on individual cases “for privacy reasons.”
WHO and national health officials have said person-to-person transmission is possible through close personal contact, such as between couples.
Hantavirus is typically contracted through contact with rodents. The WHO confirmed this week that the outbreak is the Andes strain of the virus, which, unlike other strains, can spread between people through close personal contact.
Health experts have said even that strain is not as easily transmitted as airborne diseases such as influenza or Covid-19.
Hantavirus infection in humans is extremely rare and has never been previously recorded on a cruise ship. CDC data shows there were 890 confirmed cases in the U.S. from 1993 to 2023.
Argentine authorities said that a rodent-trapping program would take place in the city of Ushuaia, where the MV Hondius began its journey, and that they would conduct 2,500 diagnostic tests to identify the outbreak’s origin.
A travel vlogger aboard the vessel recorded a video of the captain telling passengers that the ship was “not infectious” after having announced the first death. He told NBC News that passengers were “not well informed” about the unfolding situation.
Oceanwide Expeditions addressed a video that was circulating of the captain’s announcement, saying it was made before the person’s cause of death was known and that at the time “no evidence of a virus or contagion was present on the vessel.”
The ship is heading north from Cape Verde, off the western coast of Africa, to the Spanish-controlled Canary Islands. The journey is expected to last three to four days, though the leader of the islands’ regional government is reluctant to accept the ship.
Spain’s Interior Ministry said that the ship was expected to arrive Sunday and that evacuations would begin Monday, “if all goes well.”
Virginia Barcones, the secretary general of civil protection and emergencies at the Interior Ministry, said at a news conference Thursday that the U.S. will send an aircraft to pick up the 17 American passengers still aboard the ship.
The three people who have died are a Dutch couple and a German national. A British man is being treated in a hospital in South Africa.
It emerged Wednesday that a man who had left the ship was being treated in Zurich with suspected hantavirus.
Three patients were transported from the MV Hondius on Wednesday for medical treatment in the Netherlands and Germany as health officials shift their focus to locating and monitoring the dozens of people who left the ship along its voyage.
Patrick Smith is a London-based editor and reporter for NBC News Digital.
Camille Behnke is duty producer for NBC News based in London.
Minyvonne Burke is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News.
Alicia Victoria Lozano is a California-based reporter for NBC News focusing on climate change, wildfires and the changing politics of drug laws.
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