A 70-year-old man fell ill on a polar cruise with a fever, headache, stomach pain and diarrhoea. He died when the MV Hondius reached the island of St Helena. His 69-year-old wife was evacuated to South Africa and died in a hospital in Johannesburg. By early May 2026 a third passenger was dead as well, and about 150 people from around the world were still on a ship anchored off Cape Verde.
The Dutch-run expedition vessel left Ushuaia in Argentina on 20 March and was due to finish its voyage in Cape Verde on 4 May. The World Health Organization told the BBC it was dealing with a suspected hantavirus outbreak and called it a “public health event.” Its first count was one confirmed case and five suspected. A 69-year-old British man was in intensive care in Johannesburg. Within days, the tally stood at seven cases, two confirmed and five suspected, with three deaths, one person critically ill and three with milder symptoms.
A virus that rarely passes between people
Hantavirus normally reaches people through contact with the urine, droppings or saliva of infected rodents, and it can bring on severe breathing problems. South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases found the Andes strain in the Dutch woman who died and in the British patient. That strain can, rarely, spread from person to person, usually only through very close contact.
“We do believe that there may be some human-to-human transmission that is happening among the really close contacts,” said Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO, pointing to the husband and wife and others who had shared cabins. The agency said the danger to the wider public stayed low. It was tracing contacts, including passengers on a flight the Dutch woman took before she died.
Life on board
For the passengers and crew, 23 nationalities in all, the harder part was waiting. Ship operator Oceanwide Expeditions called it “a serious medical situation.” Two crew members, one of them the ship’s doctor, needed urgent care, and for a time officials in Cape Verde had not authorised them to leave. Microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles pointed out that hantavirus symptoms can take anywhere from one to eight weeks to appear after exposure, so no one on board could count on being in the clear for weeks.
The ship was later sent on toward the Canary Islands, and Spanish officials were to examine and treat everyone before they went home. Spain’s Health Ministry said it was morally and legally bound to help, noting that several Spaniards were on board. Operators said all contact with those on the ship would happen in designated spaces and transport, to keep it away from local people and protect health workers.
How the virus got on board is still unanswered. The WHO assumes the Andes virus is to blame, but that awaits genetic sequencing by researchers in South Africa. The organisation also noted that there were no rats on the ship.
Sources
- Three dead in suspected virus outbreak on Atlantic cruise ship (BBC via The Namibian)
- Hantavirus Outbreak on Cruise Ship: Three Dead as WHO Traces Contacts
