Health officials across multiple countries have been working to identify and monitor people who may have been exposed to hantavirus after passengers left a cruise ship before health authorities confirmed the outbreak, according to reports from several governments and the World Health Organization.
The effort intensified after authorities said that by April 24—nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board—more than two dozen people from at least 12 countries left the ship without contact tracing, including passengers who disembarked at the remote South Atlantic territory of St. Helena, where the ship stopped as scheduled for some travelers. The operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, said none of the remaining passengers or crew were currently symptomatic as the vessel began sailing toward Spain’s Canary Islands.
Oceanwide Expeditions said that three passengers have died in the outbreak: a Dutch couple and a German national. The reports also described the earlier case that health authorities first confirmed in a ship passenger in early May, after a British man was evacuated from the vessel near the St. Helena stop and taken to specialized hospitals in Europe for treatment, with the patient later tested in South Africa and said to be in intensive care.
As part of the response, authorities in Argentina were seeking the outbreak’s origins while investigating the route that preceded the ship’s departure. Investigators from Argentina’s Health Ministry had not yet left for the southern town where they suspect the outbreak began, officials told The Associated Press, and they suspected a Dutch couple may have contracted the virus during a bird-watching trip before boarding. The World Health Organization said the Dutch couple had traveled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay before joining the cruise, including visits to locations where rodents known to carry the virus were present.
The Dutch couple’s movements also became central to the contact-tracing work in southern and western Africa. The ship’s operator said a total of 30 passengers left the vessel at St. Helena, including the deceased Dutch man and his wife, while the Dutch Foreign Ministry put the figure at about 40. The report said the first Dutch man to die on board was taken off the ship on St. Helena on April 24, when his wife also disembarked, after which she flew to South Africa a day later and died there.
Officials in St. Helena said they were monitoring a small number of people labeled “higher risk contacts,” who were told to isolate for 45 days, according to the St. Helena government. In Singapore, health authorities said they were monitoring two men who got off the ship at St. Helena, flew to South Africa, and then returned home, with the two men reportedly isolated and tested after arriving in Singapore at different times.
South Africa’s investigations also focused on air travel that occurred immediately after the St. Helena stop. Dutch officials said a flight attendant on a South African plane who was briefly boarded by an infected cruise passenger was showing symptoms and would be tested in an isolation ward at an Amsterdam hospital, with the report noting the passenger was too ill to make the international flight to Europe and was taken off the plane in Johannesburg, where she died.
The World Health Organization urged caution about spread while emphasizing the monitoring response, saying in a statement that the risk to the wider public was low. Dr. Abdirahman Mahamud, the WHO’s alert and response director, said health systems could limit the outbreak if public health measures were implemented and countries showed “solidarity” across borders. The WHO also said hantavirus typically spreads through inhaling contaminated rodent droppings and is not easily transmitted between people.
The WHO and national health agencies were also working to understand which hantavirus strain may be involved and how it reached the ship. Reports said tests confirmed at least five people who were on board were infected with a hantavirus known as Andes virus, which the report described as the only hantavirus thought capable of spreading human-to-human and that can cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. Investigators said the ship departed from Argentina and that Argentina-focused efforts would include analyzing rodents near a trash heap in Ushuaia, with an Argentine team and the Malbrán Institute planned to travel in the coming days.
On the operational side, the cruise vessel remained under monitoring while authorities completed follow-up on those who left early. The report said the ship was expected to arrive in the Canary Islands on Saturday or Sunday with more than 140 passengers and crew members still on board, and it said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told Reuters-affiliated reporting he had been in regular touch with the ship’s captain as morale improved once the ship began moving again.
The reported monitoring and contact-tracing timeline underscored the challenge officials face when symptoms emerge after travel, with hantavirus symptoms typically appearing between one and eight weeks after exposure. Investigators said a French citizen with “benign symptoms” was in isolation and undergoing medical tests after being identified as a contact case linked to the St. Helena to Johannesburg flight, while the report said the German woman, described as the third fatality, was still on the ship after dying on May 2.