A cruise ship that left the bottom of the world in early April is now at the center of an international scramble. Three people are dead. At least eight are infected. And passengers who left the ship weeks ago are scattered across a dozen countries, some of them only now finding out they may have been exposed to a rare and serious virus.
The disease is hantavirus, specifically the Andes strain, and it has turned what was supposed to be a luxury expedition cruise into a floating crisis that public officials from the U.S. to Singapore are trying to contain.
What Happened on the MV Hondius
The MV Hondius is a Dutch-flagged expedition cruise ship operated by Oceanwide Expeditions. It departed from Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1, 2026, headed on a route across the South Atlantic with stops in Antarctica, South Georgia, Tristan da Cunha, Saint Helena, and other remote islands. The ship carried 146 people from 23 different countries, including 17 Americans. Think birdwatching, icebergs, Zodiac boats. Not exactly a party cruise.
The first passenger to get sick was a 70-year-old Dutch man. He developed fever, headache, abdominal pain, and diarrhea around April 6. Five days later, on April 11, he died on board. His body stayed on the ship for nearly two weeks before being removed at the island of Saint Helena on April 24.
His wife, who had been in close contact with him, disembarked at Saint Helena with gastrointestinal symptoms. She boarded a flight to Johannesburg the next day, collapsed at the airport, and died in an emergency department on April 26. Lab testing later confirmed hantavirus in her system.
A third passenger, a German woman, died on May 2. Another man was medically evacuated to South Africa and admitted to an ICU. As of May 7, eight total cases had been reported, with five confirmed by lab testing and three suspected.
How Did the Virus Get on Board?
This is the part investigators have been working to piece together. According to a report from Argentina’s national health ministry, the Dutch couple had been on a four-month road trip through Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina from late November 2025 all the way up to April 1, 2026, the day they boarded the ship. They were avid birdwatchers.
Anonymous Argentine investigators told reporters that the leading theory was the couple contracted the virus while birdwatching, possibly during a visit to a landfill near Ushuaia. Hantavirus is primarily picked up through contact with rodent urine, droppings, or saliva. Birdwatching in rural areas where rodents are common? That fits the profile perfectly.
WHO’s Maria Van Kerkhove said as much: “Our assumption is [the first patients] were infected off the boat and then joined the cruise.” But she also raised another possibility. Some of the islands the ship visited during its expedition have large rodent populations. “Some islands have a lot of rodents,” Van Kerkhove said. “So there could be some source of infection on the islands as well for some of the other suspect cases.”
Why This Strain Is Different
There are more than 20 strains of hantavirus known to make people sick. Most of them spread from rodents to humans and stop there. Person-to-person transmission isn’t really a thing with the vast majority of strains.
The Andes virus is the exception. It is the only hantavirus ever documented to spread between humans. That’s what makes this outbreak different from a typical case where someone gets sick cleaning out a barn.
WHO confirmed that at least some of the transmission on the MV Hondius appears to have been human to human. Van Kerkhove said, “We do believe that there may be some human-to-human transmission that’s happening among the really close contacts, the husband and wife, people who’ve shared cabins.” The timeline supports this. The first patient got sick within the first week. Others became ill two to three weeks later, which lines up with the virus’s incubation period of one to eight weeks.
That said, this is not a virus that spreads like COVID or the flu. UC Riverside biomedical sciences professor Scott Pegan explained that an infected person with Andes virus typically infects fewer than one other person on average. Compare that to early COVID, where one person could infect 15 to 20 others. The confined quarters of a cruise ship cabin, though, likely played a role in making transmission easier.
30 Passengers Left the Ship With No Contact Tracing
Here’s where things get messy. On April 24, roughly 30 passengers got off the MV Hondius at Saint Helena. This was nearly two weeks after the first passenger died. And according to Oceanwide Expeditions and Dutch officials, who disclosed this on May 7, there was no contact tracing in place when they left.
Those passengers then traveled home to their respective countries. Flights from Saint Helena are rare, normally running about once a week, which means many of them likely shared the same aircraft. That’s exactly what happened in at least one confirmed case: a French group of eight people who were never on the cruise ended up on the same April 25 flight from Saint Helena to Johannesburg as a confirmed case. One of those eight later developed mild symptoms.
On May 7, a flight attendant who worked the Johannesburg-to-Amsterdam flight on April 26 was admitted to Amsterdam University Medical Center on suspicion of infection. Another patient was hospitalized at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
Where the Virus Has Reached So Far
The ripple effects of those 30 passengers leaving the ship have spread wide. In Singapore, two men in their 60s were self-isolating and being tested. In Canada, three people were self-isolating: two in Ontario and one in Quebec. At least one of those Canadians was never on the cruise but shared a flight home with two people who were.
In Switzerland, a former passenger was being treated for hantavirus in Zurich. In France, eight close contacts were identified. In the United States, authorities in Georgia, Arizona, California, Texas, and Virginia confirmed they were monitoring returning residents. As of May 7, none of the Americans being monitored were symptomatic.
Three sick passengers were evacuated to the Netherlands by a Luxembourg Air Rescue plane, arriving at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport on May 6.
The Ship That Nobody Wanted to Let Dock
As of May 6, the MV Hondius was anchored off the coast of Praia, Cape Verde, with passengers unable to get off. The plan had been to dock in Tenerife, in Spain’s Canary Islands, for a full investigation and disinfection. But the regional president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, refused entry. He said he “cannot allow [MV Hondius] to enter the Canaries,” citing concerns about the safety of island residents and memories of the COVID-19 pandemic.
WHO fired back, saying “Spain has a moral and legal obligation to assist these people.” The body of the third person to die, the German woman, was still on board as of May 7.
Meanwhile, the passengers who remained on the ship had been in quarantine conditions for weeks. Dr. Stephen Kornfeld, an Oregon physician who happened to be vacationing on board, told CNN he had stepped in to help when the ship’s own doctor fell ill. He said most passengers had little to no contact with the symptomatic individuals. “People on the boat have been in quarantine and isolation for three, four weeks,” he said.
Is This Going to Be the Next Pandemic?
Short answer: every expert and official who has weighed in says no. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated plainly on May 7: “While this is a serious incident, [the WHO] assesses the public health risk as low.” WHO’s Dr. Abdirahman Mahamud addressed the social media comparisons to COVID directly, saying there were no signs this was the beginning of a pandemic.
The European CDC assessed the risk to the general population in Europe as “very low.” They pointed out a key detail: the natural rodent reservoir for the Andes virus does not exist in Europe. So even if the virus were to spread from evacuated passengers, it would have no way to establish itself in local rodent populations and cycle back to humans.
That comparison to COVID keeps coming up, though, and it’s easy to see why. A cruise ship. A mysterious illness. Passengers scattering to dozens of countries before anyone fully understands what’s happening. It hits the same nerve. But the mechanics are completely different. This virus does not spread easily between people. It requires close, prolonged contact, not a shared elevator or restaurant. An infected person infects fewer than one other person on average. COVID, in contrast, was a wildfire.
What’s Happening Now
The investigation is moving in multiple directions at once. Argentina’s Malbrán Institute launched rodent trapping and testing along the Dutch couple’s entire travel route through South America, trying to pinpoint exactly where they picked up the virus. WHO is coordinating contact tracing across every country with a returning passenger, which is no small task given that 23 nationalities were on board.
Passengers still on the MV Hondius were told to stay in their cabins during disinfection, use hand sanitizer constantly, and report any symptoms immediately. Anyone who developed symptoms would be isolated. The ship was still looking for a port willing to accept it.
For the 17 Americans who were on board, state health departments in at least five states are actively keeping tabs. None had shown symptoms as of the most recent updates. But with an incubation period that can stretch up to six weeks, the monitoring window is far from closed.