Experts from the World Health Organization have said they expect spread of a deadly and rare hantavirus variant to be “limited” and are insisting a cruise ship outbreak that has killed three people is “not the start of a pandemic”—as British authorities confirm another suspected case linked to the ship. (See the latest hantavirus cruise updates here).
A Bombardier Challenger 605 medical aircraft carrying some of the passengers believed to be infected with hantavirus from the cruise ship MV Hondius on May 6, 2026.
ANP/AFP via Getty Images
WHO officials have said the Andes variant of the hantavirus, which has sickened at least nine people with two more suspected cases discovered Friday, will not cause a global outbreak on the scale of the coronavirus because it spreads very differently.
This particular strain of the disease, the only one known to be spread person-to-person, requires sustained, close contact to be transmitted, the WHO has said, suggesting casual encounters are extremely unlikely to result in further infections.
Officials are racing to trace the close contacts of more than two dozen people who disembarked from the cruise ship in the middle of its excursion—before they knew they’d been exposed to a deadly disease—including Americans from Georgia, Arizona, Texas, Virginia and California.
None of the Americans have shown symptoms, various state health agencies reported, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said "the risk to the American public is extremely low.”
Dr. Abdirahman Mahamud of the WHO said if everyone exposed to the illness follows public health measures, “we can break this chain of transmission and it doesn’t need to be a large epidemic.”
"This is not the start of an epidemic. This is not the start of a pandemic," Maria Van Kerkhove, infectious disease epidemiologist with WHO, told reporters. "But it is a good opportunity to say that investments in pathogens like this are critical because therapeutics, diagnostics, vaccines save lives."
A hantavirus outbreak was discovered aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship, which left Argentina on April 1 for a weeks-long trip to the Canary Islands with stops along the way, after the death of a Dutch man on board. His wife died weeks later, and tested positive for the Andes strain of hantavirus. Officials think it’s likely the couple was exposed to the disease, which usually spreads from rodents to humans via contact with urine or waste, during a birdwatching trip at a landfill in Argentina, one of the few countries where rodents are known to carry the Andes variant. One other passenger died aboard the ship amid the outbreak, and at least five other people have been sickened in either confirmed or suspected cases. A flight attendant who came into brief contact with one of the infected passengers, and later developed symptoms, has since tested negative for the virus, which WHO officials say confirms their assertion that the disease requires close, prolonged contact to spread. More than two dozen passengers departed the MV Hondius after the death of the first passenger but before they knew a deadly disease was circulating on board, including a Swiss man who returned to his home country and later tested positive for the virus. Health officials are working to monitor all of those people for potential symptoms and ensure no further spread. Some of those passengers, including in Singapore and Britain, are in voluntary quarantine. (See a list of suspected and confirmed cases here).
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