Three passengers are dead. Seven people are ill. The ship is anchored off Cape Verde, passengers cannot disembark, and the World Health Organization is coordinating the response.
The suspected cause is hantavirus, a rodent-borne pathogen with no cure and no approved vaccine. It is not a disease we associate with cruise ships. The MV Hondius departed Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1, transited Antarctica and the island of St. Helena, and is now the site of what infectious disease experts are calling a genuinely unprecedented outbreak in this kind of setting. Notably, authorities in the Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego— from which the ship departed — have confirmed that no hantavirus cases have ever been recorded there. WHO notes, however, that the virus is endemic in other regions of Argentina and Chile.
