Hantavirus Scare Over? What We Know As Last Cruise Ship Passengers Leave Quarantine

Published 19 June 2026 · health

Hantavirus Scare Over? What We Know As Last Cruise Ship Passengers Leave Quarantine Published By, Last Updated: June 19, 2026, 17:35 IST Six weeks, 13

Hantavirus Scare Over? What We Know As Last Cruise Ship Passengers Leave Quarantine Published By, Last Updated: June 19, 2026, 17:35 IST Six weeks, 13 cases, three dead, and one Florida woman who said she was being 'held hostage' — here is what actually happened aboard the MV Hondius. Rapid Read People being evacuated from MV Hondius after a hantavirus outbreak. (Reuters) The last quarantine orders tied to the MV Hondius cruise ship hantavirus outbreak have lapsed, nearly seven weeks after a Dutch-flagged polar exploration vessel became the site of one of the most closely watched disease clusters since the early Covid years, and the passengers, all of them, are finally home. There were 12 confirmed cases and one probable, across passengers and crew from 23 nationalities. Three people died. The ship had set off from Ushuaia in southern Argentina on 1 April 2026, headed into some of the most remote ocean on earth, Antarctica, South Georgia Island, Tristan da Cunha, Saint Helena, Ascension Island. On 2 May, the WHO was notified of a cluster of severe respiratory illness aboard. By then, two passengers were already dead. The pathogen was the Andes virus. A type of hantavirus which is the only strain of hantavirus known to spread from human to human.

Hantaviruses typically move through rodent droppings. The Andes virus sometimes does not follow that rule. That single biological fact is what turned a remote maritime medical emergency into an international public health response spanning at least a dozen countries. The first death came quietly. A passenger’s body was removed from the vessel at Saint Helena on 24 April. His close contact, a woman, disembarked there with gastrointestinal symptoms and then deteriorated on a flight to Johannesburg. She died upon arrival at the emergency department on 26 April. Both cases were later confirmed by PCR. Eighteen Americans were evacuated and flown to the Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the same facility that had handled Covid repatriations from the Diamond Princess in 2020. The 42-day clock started. Passengers across Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and South Africa entered their own arrangements. The Politics Of The Case Angela Perryman, 47, a Florida resident, said she had not had a single day in quarantine without crying. “I’m being held hostage in this power struggle between a state and the federal government," she told reporters. CDC wanted home quarantine with monitoring. Florida’s health authorities resisted. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.