A cruise ship linked to a deadly hantavirus outbreak has reached waters off Tenerife, where Spanish health authorities have begun testing passengers and moving them off the vessel in small groups before they are flown to their home countries.
The MV Hondius, a Dutch vessel operated by Oceanwide Expeditions, has been at the center of an expanding international public health response after three people died and several others fell ill or tested positive. Health officials are also tracing people who disembarked before the outbreak was detected, a task complicated by the virus’s incubation period, which the World Health Organization says can last up to six weeks.
Authorities have tried to calm wider public concern, stressing that the strain involved is not spreading like Covid-19. The WHO has said the outbreak does not pose a broad pandemic-style threat because the Andes strain of hantavirus is associated with close, intimate contact in the rare instances when it spreads between people.
What is happening in Tenerife
The ship arrived off the Spanish island on Sunday after leaving the coast of Cape Verde, where it had remained offshore for several days. Spanish officials said passengers were being tested to confirm they were asymptomatic before being taken ashore by small boats.
Spanish passengers were expected to be flown to a military hospital in Madrid for quarantine. The 17 Americans aboard were expected to travel to a medical center in Nebraska after being cleared to leave the ship. A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official cited in reporting said federal authorities did not plan to mandate quarantine for the Americans on arrival, but would screen them and have them either stay briefly at Nebraska’s National Quarantine Unit or return home while monitoring for symptoms for 42 days in contact with local health officials.
About 30 crew members are expected to remain aboard as the vessel continues to the Netherlands, where it is to be disinfected.
How many cases are known
The confirmed toll has been reported with some variation as authorities test passengers and review suspected infections. The WHO has confirmed at least five cases, including three deaths, according to the BBC. A later account citing the WHO said eight people aboard had fallen ill, with six confirmed cases and two suspected cases.
The outbreak has drawn in health agencies across multiple continents. The WHO has been in contact with officials in at least 12 countries monitoring citizens who were on the ship or who had returned home after possible exposure. Those countries include the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Singapore, Turkey and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
In the United States, health agencies in several states have said they were monitoring people who had been on the ship, with no symptoms reported among those individuals in the BBC account. The CDC has classified the response as a Level 3 emergency response, its lowest level.
How the outbreak may have spread
Hantaviruses usually infect people through exposure to virus particles from rodent urine, droppings or saliva. The strain identified in this outbreak is the Andes strain, which can cause severe disease and has rarely been documented spreading from person to person. The WHO has said this is the first known transmission of the virus on a boat.
The source of the outbreak has not been confirmed. Before boarding the cruise on April 1 in Ushuaia, Argentina, a Dutch couple who later died had taken a bird-watching trip through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, including areas where a rat species known to carry the Andes strain was present, according to the WHO. Argentine authorities are examining whether infections may have begun there.
The ship’s itinerary and passenger movements have added urgency to the contact-tracing effort. Oceanwide Expeditions said 114 guests and 61 crew members from 22 countries boarded the vessel, and 32 guests disembarked at St. Helena on April 24. The first confirmed case was reported after that, according to the BBC.
Why officials say the wider risk is low
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who traveled to the island as the ship arrived, urged residents not to equate the outbreak with the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The pain of 2020 is still real, and I do not dismiss it for a single moment,” he said in a statement. “But I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another COVID-19. The current public health risk from Hantavirus remains low.”
That low-risk assessment has not ended local unease. The president of the Canary Islands objected to the ship entering the islands, saying officials had not been given enough information, and residents quoted by the BBC expressed concern even as they acknowledged passengers needed help.
For health authorities, the immediate challenge is narrower but still demanding: safely disembark those still aboard, monitor people who may have been exposed, and watch for new cases during the weeks-long incubation window.
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