Returning Passengers Monitored After Hantavirus Outbreak Kills 3 on Cruise Ship Hondius | National News

Health officials around the globe are monitoring the symptoms of returning passengers from the polar expedition ship Hondius after a Dutch couple and a German national died of hantavirus and more passengers became sick.

As of Thursday, eight cases of hantavirus have been reported from the ship that crossed the Atlantic and five of them are confirmed, including the three passengers that died.

One sick passenger is in an intensive care unit in South Africa but improving, according to the World Health Organization. Three more are receiving medical treatment in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany.

The ship with about 150 passengers is expected to dock at Tenerife in the Canary Islands in three to four days, and no remaining passengers are symptomatic, according to Oceanwide Expeditions.

“I want to be unequivocal here: This is not SARS-CoV-2. This is not the start of a COVID pandemic,” said WHO acting Director of Epidemic and Pandemic Management Maria Van Kerkhove at a media briefing on Thursday. “This is an outbreak that we see on a ship.”

WHO said it is assuming that the infected passengers did not contract the rodent-borne illness on the cruise ship.

Argentina, where the ship departed, has the highest incidence of hantavirus in Latin America, according to WHO. The country is seeing a surge in cases of the disease – 101 infections since June 2025, about double the amount recorded over the same period in the previous year. Local public health officials attribute the increase to the effects of climate change on rodent populations and habitats.

According to Argentine officials, the leading hypothesis is that the Dutch couple contracted the virus while bird-watching in the city of Ushuaia at the southern tip of Argentina before boarding the ship.

The virus’s long incubation period – between one and eight weeks – makes it more difficult for health officials to pinpoint exactly when and where passengers were infected.

U.S. officials in at least three states – Arizona, California and Georgia – are monitoring the symptoms of the 17 Americans who were on board the cruise ship.

“We can break this chain of transmission, and this doesn’t need to be a large epidemic,” said Abdirahman Mahmoud, director of WHO’s health emergency alert and response operations.

Hantaviruses are a family of potentially deadly viruses people often contract from rodents.

Hantaviruses can cause two syndromes: hantavirus pulmonary syndrome and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome.

HPS, which affects the lungs, is found mostly in the Western Hemisphere, including in the U.S., where it is most commonly spread by the deer mouse.

The Andes virus is a strain of hantavirus found in South America that can lead to HPS and killed nearly one-third of Argentina’s infected patients in the last year. It drew headlines in the U.S. last year after officials named HPS as the cause of death of Betsy Arakawa, wife of the late actor Gene Hackman. The case saw the couple found dead in their New Mexico home under unusual and disturbing circumstances.

HFRS, which affects the kidneys, is a group of similar illnesses caused by hantaviruses mostly found in Europe and Asia.

Hantaviruses are spread mainly by rodents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“People get hantavirus from contact with rodents like rats and mice, especially when exposed to their urine, droppings and saliva,” according to the CDC. “It can also spread through a bite or scratch by a rodent, but this is rare.”

Sometimes hantavirus can spread from person to person. The Andes strain – what the passengers tested positive for – is the only hantavirus known to do so.

HPS symptoms usually start to show from a week to eight weeks after contact with an infected rodent, according to the CDC.

HFRS symptoms usually start one to two weeks after exposure.
Symptoms include:

Testing for hantavirus can be done, but it’s difficult to detect in a person who has been infected for less than 72 hours.

If the virus isn’t found in initial testing, repeat testing is typically done.

Many of the early symptoms of hantavirus can be easily confused with influenza.

Hantavirus infection doesn’t have a specific treatment. Patients typically receive supportive care for their symptoms.