WHO: Cruise Ship Hantavirus Outbreak Not a Pandemic

An outbreak of hantavirus linked to a cruise ship does not represent the start of a pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said, as health authorities work to track passengers who recently left the vessel.

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Maria van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the WHO, told reporters that the situation differs significantly from the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic because hantavirus spreads in a very different way.

“This is not Covid, this is not influenza,” she said, explaining that the virus requires close and intimate contact for transmission.

Cases linked to Antarctic cruise

The outbreak has been associated with the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius, operated by Oceanwide Expeditions. The ship departed Ushuaia in Argentina on 1 April and is scheduled to arrive in Spain’s Canary Islands on 10 May.

Around 150 passengers and crew from 28 countries were initially on board. Dozens of passengers disembarked on the island of St Helena on 24 April.

The WHO said five of eight suspected cases of hantavirus have been confirmed. Three people have died: a 69-year-old Dutch woman who had the virus, her Dutch husband, and a German woman. The cases of the husband and the German passenger are still under investigation to determine whether hantavirus was responsible.

Health officials say the Dutch woman died in South Africa two days after leaving the ship. Her husband died earlier on board the vessel on 11 April, while the German passenger died aboard the ship on 2 May.

Tracing passengers across countries

Authorities in several countries are monitoring people who may have been exposed.

Oceanwide Expeditions said 29 passengers from at least 12 nationalities left the vessel in St Helena, a British Overseas Territory. Seven of them were British nationals.

The UK Health Security Agency said two of the British passengers are now self-isolating in the United Kingdom, while four remain in St Helena. Officials are attempting to locate the seventh individual.

Spain’s civil protection agency said there are currently 19 British passengers and four British crew members still aboard the vessel as it heads toward the Canary Islands. Officials in Madrid said talks with the UK government were well advanced regarding a repatriation flight to Tenerife once the ship arrives.

Four American passengers remain on board, and Spanish authorities said the United States has indicated it is prepared to send an aircraft to collect its citizens.

Elsewhere, Singapore’s Communicable Diseases Agency said it is isolating and testing two men who had travelled on the cruise and later flew from St Helena to Johannesburg on the same flight as the Dutch woman who died. Their test results are pending.

In the United States, officials in Georgia and Arizona said three returning passengers were being monitored but had not developed symptoms.

Monitoring and containment efforts

Hantavirus is typically spread to humans through contact with rodents. However, the WHO said the current outbreak includes the first documented instance of human-to-human transmission.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organisation currently assesses the public health risk as low. He noted that the first two confirmed cases had travelled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a bird-watching trip that included locations where rat species known to carry the virus are present.

Given that hantavirus can have an incubation period of up to six weeks, health officials say additional cases could still emerge.

Passengers remaining on board the MV Hondius have been asked to wear masks, while those caring for suspected patients are advised to use higher-grade protective equipment.

Oceanwide Expeditions said the first confirmed case was not reported until 4 May and that all passengers who had already left the ship had been contacted. The company said it was working closely with authorities to determine quarantine, screening and arrival procedures for the vessel.

Meanwhile, Argentina’s health ministry said it would begin testing rodents in Ushuaia as part of efforts to trace the possible source of the outbreak.

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Adapted by ASEAN Now. Source 8 May 2026