International health authorities are working to trace passengers who left the MV Hondius ship before isolation measures were implemented due to the hantavirus outbreak that broke out on board. Oceanwide Expeditions, the Dutch cruise company that operates the ship, said 29 people disembarked in the British territory of St. Helena on April 24, while the first confirmed case of hantavirus was only reported on May 2.
They would all go home
The passengers are of 12 different nationalities and many of them would have already been contacted, even if they have now returned to their country of residence. The circumstance was confirmed to El Pais by a Spanish man who is still on board the Hondius. “The Australian returned to Australia, a passenger from Taiwan to Taiwan, the Americans to every corner of North America. The Englishman to England, the Dutchman to his home.” According to the newspaper Der telegraaf, among the passengers who disembarked there were seven Britons: two of them are currently in self-isolation in the United Kingdom, four others are still in St. Helena and are in contact with the health authorities, while traces of a seventh passenger have been lost. The Guardian speaks of “a frantic search to identify” the passengers who disembarked “and reconstruct their movements”.
The infection on the plane: two of the three passengers are negative
Meanwhile, the health authorities in the Netherlands continue to monitor the 350 passengers who were on the KLM flight which left Johannesburg on 25 April and headed to Amsterdam on which a 69-year-old Dutch passenger from the Mv Hondius boarded. Having disembarked on 24 April in St Helena with the body of her husband, who died on the ship, the woman had boarded the KLM from Johannesburg to the Netherlands, but had felt ill before departure and had been sent off. The next day she too was dead.
Dutch authorities are sending letters to passengers who were on board the flight to Amsterdam, asking them to remain “available for monitoring”. The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (Rivm) announced that three people were tested after developing symptoms: two of them tested negative for the virus, while the results of the examination of an airline stewardess are still awaited. The woman is still hospitalized in Amsterdam with mild symptoms. The GGD Kennemerland, the local health authority in the Netherlands which has jurisdiction over the Haarlem area, said that five people on board the KLM flight had “intensive contact” with the woman on board, albeit for a short period. “Passengers who sat two rows in front and two rows behind the woman on board and who were in direct contact with her must have their temperature measured every day,” a GDD spokesperson said. Health authorities have warned that “fever is an important sign”.
Hantavirus, the outbreak on ships and the journey of the two infected passengers
The Mv Hondius ship departed from Ushuaia (Argentina) on 1 April 2026 and followed a route across the South Atlantic, with numerous stops in remote regions, including Antarctica, South Georgia, Nightingale Island, Tristan da Cunha and Saint Helena. There were 147 people on board.
The outbreak began on April 6 when a 70-year-old Dutch cruise passenger began experiencing fever, headache and diarrhea. On April 11, the patient experienced breathing difficulties and died on the ship the same day. The virus then also infected his 69-year-old wife, who fell ill during the cruise and died in a Johannesburg hospital.
According to what has been reconstructed, the two tourists had landed in Argentina on November 27th and had traveled for four months in the country, then also stopping in Chile, Uruguay and then returning to Argentina – the country in which the most hantavirus infections are recorded – to board the Mv Hondius in Ushuaia on April 1st. The Argentine Ministry of Health said that “based on the information provided so far by the countries involved and the competent national authorities, it is not possible to confirm the origin of the infection”.
WHO says risk “is low”
The time between infection and the appearance of symptoms can vary from a few days to sixty days. However, it usually happens within two to four weeks. The World Health Organization (WHO) has ruled out the risk of a crisis comparable to that of Covid-19. “We are not facing the beginning of an epidemic or a pandemic. This is not Covid,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, director of the agency’s epidemic prevention department.
To date, WHO has confirmed five of the eight suspected cases linked to the ship. The organization’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, explained at a press conference that, given the incubation period of the Andes virus (which can reach up to six weeks), it is possible that further infections will emerge. However, while defining the incident as a serious incident, the WHO currently assesses the risk to global public health as “low”.