Hantavirus cruise: WHO Director-General will journey to Tenerife for disembarkment; repatriation flights deliberate on Sunday and Monday

What is hantavirus, and the way dangerous is that this outbreak?

Hantaviruses are a household of viruses carried by rodents. Hantavirus infections in people are comparatively unusual, however after they do happen, they are often harmful, with fatality charges ranging between 1% and 50% relying on the kind of hantavirus. No particular therapy exists to treatment infections, however immediate medical care can enhance sufferers’ possibilities of survival.

While most hantaviruses can’t cross between individuals, one particular sort, often known as the Andes virus, can. The Andes virus is the kind of hantavirus that laboratory assessments level to being behind this cluster. Health authorities are actually working to investigate the virus’s DNA to match its sequence to that of Andes viruses concerned in previous outbreaks.

Both Argentina and the U.S. just lately withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO). In the face of this outbreak, “I think they will reconsider their positions,” mentioned Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general. “Viruses don’t care about our politics, they don’t care about our borders, and they don’t care about all the excuses that we may have.”

When requested whether or not U.S. well being authorities are collaborating within the ongoing investigation, a number of WHO representatives confirmed that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is offering useful technical help and experience and speaking with WHO leaders each day.

Nicoletta Lanese

As of but, there’s “no indication” that there is something significantly uncommon in regards to the hantaviruses themselves, however it’s notable that the outbreak is happening on a cruise ship, mentioned Anaïs Legand, the WHO’s technical officer of viral hemorrhagic fevers. A ship is a singular setting the place individuals from many locations are in shut quarters.

When requested about movies of distressed cruise passengers circulating on-line, Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s interim director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, confirmed that WHO officers had seen the movies.

“This is quite frightening for those that are on board,” she added, noting that well being authorities are coordinating with the ship’s captain to make sure these on the ship obtain the most effective medical and psychological care doable.

Various social media posts and movies have been casting suspicion on when the MV Hondius really departed Ushuaia, Argentina. The WHO’s web site notes April 1 because the departure date, whereas the Africa CDC web site states March 20. So I reached out to the cruise operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, in regards to the discrepancy.

A spokesperson shared that, from March 20 to March 30, the ship traveled from Ushuaia to Antarctica and again. Then, from April 1 to April 24, it traveled from Ushuaia to the island of St. Helena. Then, between April 24 and May 4, it traveled from St. Helena to Cape Verde.

Andes virus outbreaks are uncommon, with only a handful documented because the Nineties. This makes investigations into clusters of instances like these related to the MV Hondius difficult. However, one outbreak that hit southern Argentina’s village of Epuyen in 2018 might show to be informative.

The Epuyen outbreak contaminated 34 individuals and led to 11 deaths resulting from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, by which a hantavirus assaults the lungs.

Earlier in the present day, the Dutch outlet RTL Nieuws reported that an airline crewmember had been admitted to Amsterdam University Medical Center (UMC) after having temporary contact with an contaminated individual from MV Hondius.

The contaminated individual — the girl whose husband was the primary to die on board — had felt unwell when she disembarked on the island of St. Helena. Her situation worsened throughout a flight from St. Helena to Johannesburg, South Africa. She then tried to board a flight from Johannesburg to Amsterdam, however “due to the passenger’s health condition at the time, the crew decided not to allow the passenger to board the flight,” KLM has said.

Ten analysis facilities that made up the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID) were terminated last year after their funder, the National Institutes of Health, deemed their work “unsafe” and “not a good use of taxpayer funding.” It seems that a kind of facilities had a pilot program aimed toward finding out the Andes virus, which has now been implicated within the MV Hondius outbreak, Scientific American reported.

The pilot program was aimed toward studying extra in regards to the internal workings of the Andes virus, together with the way it spreads from rodents to individuals. Some $100,000 would have seemingly been devoted to this mission in Argentina, sources instructed SciAm.

Good morning, everybody. We’re again with some doable glimmers of fine information, because the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight attendant who had been in touch with a girl who died from a hantavirus an infection has examined adverse for the virus, Reuters reports.

Both Reuters and the well being e-newsletter Inside Medicine (which got the scoop) cite the World Health Organization (WHO) as their supply, though we’re nonetheless awaiting firsthand affirmation.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) delayed response to the hantavirus instances suggests the U.S. is “ill prepared” for future well being crises, together with pandemics, The New York Times (NYT) stories.

“We should be able to deal collectively with a hantavirus outbreak much more quickly and effectively than this is happening,” Stephanie Psaki, a public well being skilled at Brown University and former coordinator for world well being safety within the Biden administration, instructed the NYT. “It can get much harder than this.”

The MV Hondius is presently about 200 miles (over 300 kilometers) off the west African coast, due west of the Mauritanian port metropolis of Nouadhibou. Sailing northwest, it’s anticipated to dock at Tenerife within the Canary Islands Sunday (May 10).

Health officers on the Spanish island are getting ready to carry out cautious evacuations of the ship’s passengers into an remoted, cordoned-off space.

Ben Turner

The MV Hondius is ready to achieve the Spanish island of Tenerife Sunday (May 10), the Associated Press reported May 8. The U.S. will ship a airplane to the Canary Islands to repatriate the 17 U.S. residents on board the ship.

Measures are being put in place to make sure the ship’s passengers don’t come into contact with native residents in the course of the evacuations from the cruise ship.

U.Okay. authorities have recognized a brand new suspected case of hantavirus on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, based on a May 8 statement by the U.Okay. Health Security Agency.

The particular person, a British man, seemingly disembarked from the MV Hondius when it made a cease there on April 15. He is presently within the hospital whereas his partner is isolating, U.Okay. officers mentioned. The island’s inhabitants is a bit of over 200 individuals.

Ben Turner

This is what Gustavo Palacios, a hantavirus skilled and professor of microbiology on the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York who documented a earlier outbreak of the illness, instructed El País in a narrative printed in the present day.

Palacios led a research of the November 2018 to February 2019 Andes virus outbreak within the village of Epuyén, in Argentina’s Chubut province. There had been 34 confirmed instances and 11 deaths throughout that outbreak, with human-to-human transmission occurring throughout a “superspreader” birthday celebration that resulted in 4 generations of infections.

A girl is self-isolating within the Spanish metropolis of Alicante after touring on a flight “close to” a girl who died with a hantavirus an infection, Spain’s well being minister, Mónica García, wrote in a translated statement on X.

The girl “has reported mild symptoms compatible [with the disease] and is being preventively isolated while the National Microbiology Center analyzes the diagnostic samples that will be taken from her,” García wrote.

Two Singapore residents who had been on board the MV Hondius have examined adverse for hantavirus, Singapore’s Communicable Diseases Agency has announced.

The two residents, a 67-year-old and a 65-year-old, had returned to Singapore from St. Helena on the identical flight as an individual who later died from the virus.

Since leaving Ushuaia, Argentina, April 1, MV Hondius has visited numerous islands.

The ship first visited South Georgia and Tristan da Cunha, earlier than crusing on to St. Helena. They stopped at St. Helena April 24, with this being the ultimate vacation spot for some passengers on board.

The reply is difficult: Cases of hantavirus an infection did rise in components of the Americas in 2025, based on a Dec. 19, 2025 report from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). But the sample is much from uniform throughout the remainder of the world.

Argentina routinely experiences the best variety of hantavirus instances within the Americas, and hantavirus instances are additionally rising there. Argentina’s ministry of well being reported on May 5 that there have been 101 confirmed hantavirus instances since June 2025, based on the Associated Press (AP). That’s a rise from the 69 cases (11 confirmed and 58 under investigation) in Argentina in 2024.

“The only window of opportunity we have to carry out this operation is around 12 o’clock on Sunday morning and until conditions change from Monday,” Alfonso Cabello, spokesperson for the federal government of the Canary Islands, told reporters today (May 8).

The 17 American residents who’re presently on board the MV Hondius will obtain a repatriation flight organized by the U.S. Department of State, a spokesperson for the division told Reuters today (May 8).

“The Department of State is ​closely tracking the hantavirus outbreak on ​a Dutch cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean and maintaining close contact with ​the cruise ship staff, Americans ​on board, and U.S. and international health ‌authorities,” the spokesperson mentioned in a press release.

Scientists on the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have been engaged on hantavirus vaccines because the Nineteen Eighties, virologist Jay Hooper instructed Nature News. Hooper’s crew has already accomplished Phase I clinical trials of a vaccine that protects towards the Andes virus ‪—‬ the one hantavirus sort that has been proven to unfold between people ‪—‬ that has been linked to the MV Hondius cluster. But the crew has not recognized a area with sufficient instances to run the total medical trial that will enable them to fulfill licensing necessities for a vaccine.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has dispatched workers to fulfill American passengers aboard the MV Hondius within the Canary Islands. From there, the passengers shall be escorted again to the U.S. aboard a constitution flight to quarantine. “One source said the charter is a specialized aircraft with a biocontainment unit, similar to those used during Covid-19 evacuations,” CNN reported. The passengers will then quarantine in Nebraska, which hosts the federally funded National Quarantine Unit and the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.

“Nebraska Medicine and UNMC [University of Nebraska Medical Center] remain in close coordination with national partners regarding the evolving situation with the hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship,” Nebraska Medicine mentioned in a press release. “We cannot discuss specific communications at this time, but our specialized teams, including the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit and National Quarantine Unit, are staffed and ready, if needed, to safely provide care while protecting our staff and the community.”

In a translated X post, Spain’s well being minister, Mónica García, introduced, “We confirmed that the second person who traveled on the plane at the same time as the Dutch woman from the MV Hondius cruise ship, who later died from hantavirus in Johannesburg, has been located.”

According to García, the South African girl is presently asymptomatic in South Africa, after having stayed per week in Barcelona.

If you’ve got any questions on hantaviruses that you simply’d like us to handle, attain out to [email protected] with the subject line “Reader hantavirus question.” (Questions without the appropriate subject line may be missed or deleted.)

Nicoletta Lanese

On May 9, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), shared a message with the residents of the Spanish island of Tenerife, the place MV Hondius is anticipated to make port Sunday (May 10).

“It is not common for me to write directly to the people of a single community, but today I feel it is not only appropriate, it is necessary,” he wrote. “I want to speak to you directly, not through press releases or technical briefings, but as one human being to another, because you deserve that.”

In a live social media update on Saturday, Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s interim director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, clarified that the variety of confirmed and suspected hantavirus instances related to MV Hondius remains to be eight. There had been some dialogue of a possible ninth case, however testing has now confirmed that case was adverse, she mentioned.

On Friday, the WHO said six of the eight cases have now been confirmed to be hantavirus, whereas the ultimate two instances are suspected to be.

In the live social media update on Saturday, Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO mentioned plans are in place to disembark the remaining passengers and crew from MV Hondius on Sunday, and that repatriation flights are deliberate to start out transporting individuals dwelling Sunday and Monday.

The disembarkment will contain MV Hondius anchoring offshore and small boats taking subsets of the passengers and crew from the ship to land. Everyone will bear an intensive screening and “exposure assessment” to find out what diploma of publicity they seemingly needed to the contaminated passengers on board. Everyone on board stays asymptomatic as of May 9, Van Kerkhove mentioned.