Cruise ships nowadays, especially post-COVID, take every precaution possible to mitigate the spread of viruses. Still, sometimes it’s a losing effort. That’s become painfully clear as a cruise ship bound for the Canary Islands now drifts in limbo after a hantavirus outbreak that has sickened several passengers and killed three.
The New York Times reports that the MV Hondius, which flies under the Dutch flag, has been stuck off the coast of Cape Verde after authorities refused it permission to dock. It’s carrying roughly 150 people. Health officials are trying to evacuate the sick while also investigating how a virus usually associated with rodents ended up running around the ship.
The World Health Organization says seven cases have been identified so far, with two confirmed and five suspected, with three confirmed deaths. Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome can kill nearly 40 percent of those it infects. Symptoms often start like the flu before ramping up into severe respiratory issues.
It should be noted that Hantavirus is not COVID, or anything like it. It doesn’t spread easily through the air, though it is contracted by inhaling particles, in this case from infected rodent droppings or urine.
Human-to-human transmission isn’t impossible, but it is considered rare and usually linked to very close contact. Investigators suspect the culprit is the Hantavirus Andes strain, one of the few variants with a history of person-to-person spread, but that has yet to be confirmed.
The bigger mystery here is how it got onto the ship. The Hondius had recently traveled through remote regions of Antarctica and some isolated Atlantic islands, where human interaction with wildlife is possible, though difficult to track.
Passengers have been told to stay in their cabins while crews disinfect the ship and medical teams work out the mechanics of evacuations. At the time of publication, one critically ill patient remains in intensive care in South Africa, and others are awaiting transport.
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