Life aboard the stranded hantavirus cruise ship

Life on board the MV Hondius has turned from a dream adventure to a tragic nightmare after the outbreak of hantavirus.

Three people were today evacuated from the boat that is currently off the coast of Cape Verde. The patients – British, German, and Dutch nationals – are being taken to the Netherlands to receive medical care. In addition to the three passengers who died earlier in the cruise, five other people are thought to have symptoms consistent with an outbreak of hantavirus.

Though the “overall public health risk remains low”, the World Health Organization is closely monitoring the health of passengers and crew on board the ship, said WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Earlier, the Canary Islands government announced its opposition to Spain’s plan to allow the Hondius to dock there. Its originally intended destination, Cape Verde, had also refused the ship entry.

‘Tragic echoes’ of Covid

When the MV Hondius set sail in April, it was embarking on a “voyage of adventure to some of the world’s most remote islands”, said CNN. “Whales, dolphins and penguins awaited; landscapes of icy expanses, towering cliffs and rolling green hills beckoned.”

Now, the “nearly 150 passengers” are “isolating in their cabins, trapped aboard a ship anchored in the Atlantic, taking what measures they can to shield themselves from an outbreak of a deadly virus”.

Travel vlogger Kasem Hato, who is on board, said: “Most of the people on the ship are taking the matter very calmly.” The ship’s captain and staff are keeping passengers updated at regular intervals, while the passengers themselves are keeping “busy by reading, watching movies, drinking hot beverages”. He added: “If it were going to become an epidemic, it would have happened a long time ago.”

Crew and passengers are not only “trapped” on a ship experiencing a “lethal hantavirus outbreak”, but they are also “totally isolated from the rest of the world”, said The Times. Thought to cost around £10,000 per person, the cruise has “descended into something with tragic echoes of the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic”.

Whether the ship can dock in the Canary Islands has become a “hot political issue”, said the BBC. Fernando Clavijo, the islands’ president, has called his lack of involvement in the initial decision to permit docking there an act of “institutional disloyalty” by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. The head of the Island Council of Tenerife has announced her “outright and utter rejection” of the plan to allow the ship to dock in the territory.

A ‘miserable wait’

There are two possible ways passengers could have contracted hantavirus, said Thomas Jeffries of Western Sydney University on The Conversation. One is exposure while on a shore excursion, and the other is the possibility of rodents entering the ship in its cargo. “Hygiene standards and food storage practices may have caused the infection to spread more quickly.”

For investigators, the exact cause of the outbreak is a “mystery”, said The Telegraph. The Hondius “did not travel anywhere where the virus is endemic”, and Antarctic cruise ships have to adhere to “scrupulous infection control” to protect the environment. Passengers are “usually hosed down with disinfectant” before and after disembarking to avoid contaminating the area with any pathogens.

In the coming days, it may be possible to track down the source through the infected crew members, as they rarely accompany passengers on trips. “Narrowing down who went to particular locations should help pinpoint the source of the outbreak.” Unless a mouse or rat has “stowed away” on board, it is more likely that “several passengers on the ship were exposed at the same time, probably during an excursion”.

Thankfully, this is “not a new pandemic waiting to begin”, said The Telegraph. “The risk for the rest of the world is negligible.”

Having said that, isolating passengers are likely to “face a miserable wait”. Due to the incubation period of the virus, the ship may need to quarantine for up to eight weeks, and it’s likely the number of infections will rise. However, it is “unlikely to spread between passengers, so only those initially exposed will be at risk”.