A French woman infected during a hantavirus outbreak aboard the expedition ship MV Hondius is critically ill and being treated with a life-support device that circulates blood through an artificial lung, hospital officials said. The outbreak tied to the cruise has reached 11 reported cases so far, nine of which are laboratory-confirmed, and three passengers have died.
Dr. Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat Hospital in Paris, said the French patient is suffering severe lung and heart complications. She is connected to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO)–type system intended to oxygenate blood outside the body and reduce stress on the patient’s lungs and heart while medical teams attempt to stabilize her.
Health authorities believe the first people to fall ill were a Dutch couple who died after spending months in Argentina and nearby South American countries before boarding the cruise. Argentine officials say the couple joined a bird-watching tour that stopped at a landfill where rodent exposure is possible; Argentina is sending a team of experts to investigate sites the couple visited. Local officials in the Argentine province where the cruise departed have questioned whether the outbreak began there.
The World Health Organization says all confirmed and suspected cases have been reported among the ship’s passengers and crew, and that there is currently no evidence of wider community spread. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cautioned that the situation could evolve: because hantavirus has a long incubation period, additional cases might appear in the coming weeks.
A Spanish passenger who was evacuated from the Hondius has also tested positive and is quarantined at a military hospital in Madrid. With the evacuation completed, the ship is sailing back to the Netherlands to be cleaned and disinfected.
A carefully coordinated evacuation in Tenerife removed the remaining people from the ship: officials escorted 87 passengers and 35 crew members ashore, with personnel wearing full protective gear. Several flights brought evacuees, including Dutch nationals and passengers from Australia and New Zealand, to Eindhoven; those arrivals were placed under quarantine. Some crew remained on board as the vessel steamed toward Rotterdam.
Hantaviruses typically spread through contact with infected rodent droppings and are not easily transmitted between people. However, the Andes virus strain implicated in this outbreak has, in rare instances, shown potential for person-to-person transmission. Symptoms—fever, chills and muscle aches—usually appear one to eight weeks after exposure. The WHO has recommended a 42-day quarantine period for returning passengers, though enforcement and monitoring are handled by national authorities.
In the Netherlands, a hospital that treated an evacuee said 12 staff members have been placed in preventive quarantine for six weeks after not following stricter procedures for handling the patient’s blood and urine. The hospital described the risk of infection as low but took the measure as a precaution.