At least 29 passengers of 12 nationalities left the MV Hondius on 24 April after the first fatality
Rory Carroll and Sam Jones at The Guardian:
Authorities around the world are racing to trace dozens of passengers who disembarked from the cruise ship at the centre of a deadly hantavirus outbreak before isolation measures were implemented. It emerged for the first time on Thursday that at least 29 passengers of 12 nationalities left the MV Hondius on 24 April after the first fatality, prompting a scramble to identify and track their movements since then. However, the World Health Organization ruled out any Covid-scale crisis. “This is not the start of an epidemic. This is not the start of a pandemic. This is not Covid,” Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the agency’s director for epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, told reporters. The WHO said that five of the eight suspected cases linked to the ship had been confirmed and that other cases may be identified.
“Given the incubation period of the Andes virus, which can be up to six weeks, it’s possible that more cases may be reported,” the organisation’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told a news conference. “While this is a serious incident, WHO assesses the public health risk low.”
The outbreak has killed three people and caused global alarm.
Hantaviruses are a group of viruses primarily found in rodents but which can infect humans and cause flu-like symptoms, pulmonary syndrome and respiratory failure. The Andes hantavirus can spread among humans through very close contact, but is less contagious than Covid. There are no vaccines.
Hantavirus tracing efforts have begun for passengers on the MV Hondius.













