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A cruise ship with nearly 150 people aboard was waiting for help off Cape Verde in the Atlantic on Monday after three passengers died and at least three other people were left seriously ill in a suspected outbreak of the rare hantavirus, the World Health Organization and the ship’s operator said. The MV Hondius, operated by Oceanwide Expeditions, requested help from local health authorities after reaching the Cape Verde area, but Cape Verde’s Health Ministry said it would not allow the ship to dock for now.
Cape Verde said the ship would remain in open waters close to shore while officials assessed the public health risk and prepared for evacuations. Oceanwide said no one had been allowed to disembark, as the authorities weighed how to protect the surrounding population.
The WHO said it was investigating the suspected outbreak and working with local authorities and Oceanwide on a “full public health risk assessment.” The agency said its review would include “detailed investigations” and additional laboratory and epidemiological work, while “medical care and support” continued for passengers and crew.
In a statement, Oceanwide said two sick crew members—one British and one Dutch—had respiratory symptoms and needed urgent medical care. It said Cape Verde sent a medical team that included two doctors, a nurse and a laboratory specialist to the ship over three trips, and WHO official Ann Lindstrand said the team was planning for medical evacuations in which passengers would be taken from the ship via ambulance to an airport.
Lindstrand told The Associated Press that the situation required Cape Verdean officials to manage a public health event and also consider “the protection of the population here.” Oceanwide said it would consider moving to a Spanish location, either Tenerife or the port of Las Palmas, if it could not evacuate passengers in Cape Verde.
Separately, Lindstrand told AP that health workers were assessing a possible new case aboard the ship, in a person with mild fever symptoms. The AP also reported that the investigation faced questions about how the outbreak began, including whether exposures occurred before the vessel reached Cape Verde.
WHO and Oceanwide said a British man evacuated earlier tested positive for hantavirus and was in critical condition in isolated intensive care in South Africa. Another passenger death took place after the ship’s earlier route: a German passenger remained on the ship, Oceanwide said, while a 70-year-old Dutch man died onboard April 11 and his 69-year-old wife died later in South Africa after leaving the ship, the South African Department of Health said. Her blood tested positive posthumously, according to South Africa’s health minister.
Oceanwide said among the 87 remaining passengers, there were 17 Americans, 19 from the United Kingdom and 13 from Spain, and it said 61 crew members also were onboard. The cruise began in Argentina, leaving Ushuaia on April 1, according to Argentine provincial authorities, which said they confirmed no passengers had hantavirus symptoms when the Hondius departed.
Because symptoms can appear as late as eight weeks after exposure, Juan Facundo Petrina, director of epidemiology for Tierra del Fuego province, said passengers could have been incubating the disease if they acquired it within the country or elsewhere in the world. He noted that Tierra del Fuego has not historically seen hantavirus cases, though outbreaks have occurred in other Argentine provinces, where the health ministry said 28 deaths were recorded nationwide last year.
As health officials worked to determine the source and identify any exposed individuals, South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases began contact tracing related to the cruise passengers, officials said. Health officials also urged the public not to panic, saying WHO was coordinating a multicountry response to contain further spread, and WHO Europe Director Hans Henri P. Kluge said in a statement that the risk to the wider public remained low and there was “no need for panic or travel restrictions.”
MSI previously reported the WHO’s account that the suspected outbreak killed three people on the Atlantic cruise in an earlier update as authorities expanded their investigations across multiple countries.
AP journalists Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands; Michelle Gumede and Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg; Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Annie Risemberg and Mark Banchereau in Dakar, Senegal contributed.