The World Health Organization announced on July 2 that the hantavirus outbreak linked to the ‘Hondius’ cruise ship is officially over. This came after the last person in close contact completed their quarantine and tested negative for the virus.
This outbreak infected 13 people and tragically led to 3 deaths. So far, the WHO and various countries haven’t fully pinpointed the exact source. The leading theory points to an initial infection in a Dutch couple. They likely picked up the virus in Argentina while birdwatching, coming into contact with droppings from infected rodents.
The “Patient Zero” in this outbreak was a 70-year-old male ornithologist. He passed away on the ship on April 11 during the voyage. His wife’s condition worsened on the way to a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she was pronounced dead upon arrival. The identity of the third victim hasn’t been officially released by authorities.
The ship, which sails under the Dutch flag, departed from Ushuaia, Argentina’s southernmost city, on April 1. Its journey took it through Antarctica and was set to cross the Atlantic to the Canary Islands, a Spanish territory off Morocco’s west coast. The passengers and crew came from 23 different countries, mostly from Europe and the Americas.
The Andes strain of the hantavirus is found in Latin America. It’s the only known hantavirus type that can spread, to a limited extent, between people. In past outbreaks, transmission has been linked to close or prolonged contact, especially within families, between intimate partners, and among healthcare workers.
The incubation period for the Andes virus can be as long as six weeks. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus previously stressed that while this was a serious outbreak, the overall risk to the public was assessed as low.
On June 12, Argentina’s health ministry reported that experts from the National Laboratories and Health Institute Administration “Carlos Malbrán” and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were investigating hantavirus in Mendoza province. They set traps to catch long-tailed pygmy rice rats and other rodents to see if the virus was spreading there, but found nothing. This further supports the theory that the first infection on the ship didn’t happen in Argentina.
The WHO also suspects some passengers might have been infected before boarding the ship. The organization was told there were no rats on the cruise. But the health ministry of Tierra del Fuego, where Ushuaia is located, stated that the province has never reported any hantavirus cases.
Hantavirus infections happen worldwide, with about 200,000 cases annually. In the Americas, there are 200-300 reported cases each year, and the numbers are slowly rising. The death rate for this particular outbreak was a staggering 32.7%, way higher than the usual average.
In response to public concern over localized hantavirus outbreaks, China’s CDC published a popular science article on its official Weibo account on May 8. It was titled “What is Hantavirus? How does it spread? How to prevent it?”
The article explains that in China, the disease caused by hantavirus is known as “Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome.” It’s a group of viruses mainly carried by rodents, belonging to the Bunyaviridae family. There are over 20 types of hantaviruses that cause clear diseases, and different types lead to very different symptoms, mainly divided into Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome and Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome.
Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome is common in China, with cases reported everywhere except Qinghai and Xinjiang. Most patients are young or middle-aged male farmers and workers, but everyone is generally susceptible. Severe cases can be fatal if not treated promptly.
For more than a month after May 25, there were no new deaths reported by parties related to the cruise ship, and the overall situation remained stable.
Some analysts believe this outbreak serves as a multi-dimensional wake-up call for the global cruise industry and public health prevention. Key takeaways include: biosecurity in enclosed spaces can’t be taken lightly, the risk of disease on remote routes has been seriously underestimated, and there are still gaps in international public health response systems.
