At least three people have died and others have been sickened by what health authorities suspect is a hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean, with the World Health Organization and South Africa’s Department of Health saying Sunday that an investigation was underway and that one case had already been confirmed.
Who Gets Left on the Water
The Dutch company that operates the cruise said the ship was sitting off the coast of Cape Verde, an island nation off Africa’s west coast, and that local authorities were assisting but had not allowed anyone to disembark. The company said the two sick people onboard requiring urgent medical care were crew members. That detail matters: while the ship remains trapped in bureaucratic limbo, the people doing the work aboard it are the ones needing urgent care.
WHO said in a statement to The Associated Press that at least one case of hantavirus had been confirmed. One patient was in intensive care in a South African hospital, and the agency said it was working with authorities to evacuate two others with symptoms from the ship. WHO also said, “WHO is aware of and supporting a public health event involving a cruise vessel sailing in the Atlantic Ocean,” and added, “Detailed investigations are ongoing, including further laboratory testing, and epidemiological investigations. Medical care and support are being provided to passengers and crew. Sequencing of the virus is also ongoing.”
What the Authorities Say Is Happening
South Africa’s Department of Health said the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius had left Argentina around three weeks ago for a cruise that included visits to Antarctica, the Falkland Islands and other stops, and was due to ultimately head to Spain’s Canary Islands on the other side of the Atlantic. Instead, the ship has become a floating site of containment, with health authorities and operators managing who can move and who must wait.
The first victim was a 70-year-old man who died on the ship and whose body was removed in the British territory of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, the department said. The man’s wife collapsed at an airport in South Africa trying to take a flight to her home country of the Netherlands, and she died at a nearby hospital. The department identified the patient in intensive care in a hospital in Johannesburg as a British national. It said that person fell ill near Ascension Island, another remote island in the Atlantic, after the ship left Saint Helena and was transferred from there to South Africa.
Who Bears the Cost
Around 150 tourists were onboard at the time of the outbreak, South Africa’s health department said. Several online tour operators said the Hondius, which is described as a specialist polar cruise ship, usually travels with around 70 crew members. Oceanwide Expeditions, the company that runs the cruise, said the third victim’s body was still onboard the ship in Cape Verde and its priority was to ensure the two crew members who were ill received medical care.
The company said, “Local health authorities have visited the vessel to assess the condition of the two symptomatic individuals. They are yet to make a decision regarding the transfer of these individuals into medical care in Cape Verde.” That is the machinery of authority in motion: officials assess, decide, delay, and the people aboard remain stuck in the middle.
WHO said it was working with national authorities and the ship’s operators to conduct a “full public health risk assessment” and provide support for those still onboard. South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases was conducting contact tracing in the Johannesburg region to identify if other people were exposed to the infected passengers in South Africa.
Hantaviruses are found throughout the world and are spread mainly by contact with the urine or feces of infected rodents such as rats and mice. They gained attention after the late actor Gene Hackman’s wife, Betsy Arakawa, died from hantavirus infection in New Mexico last year. Hackman died around a week later at their home from heart disease. Hantaviruses cause two serious syndromes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a severe disease that affects the lungs, and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, a severe disease that affects the kidneys. WHO said hantavirus infections can be spread between people, though they are rare, and that there is no specific treatment or cure, but early medical attention can increase the chance of survival.