Health authorities are searching for dozens of passengers of the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius, who disembarked on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic before news of the hantavirus infection on board came to light. The ship landed at St. Helena on April 24, the first passenger on board died on April 11. Passengers from 12 different countries got off the ship there. On Thursday, the operator of the ship also informed the Dutch authorities about this. TASR writes about it with reference to the Reuters agency and the newspaper El País.
The ship, adapted for navigation in polar seas, set sail from the southern Argentine port of Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego on April 1, where it returned from the coast of Antarctica. She visited isolated and ecologically diverse islands in the South Atlantic. She docked at the South Sandwich Islands on April 5, Tristan da Cunha on April 13, and sailed to Saint Helena nine days later. She stopped briefly at Ascension Island on April 27 and arrived at the Cape Verde archipelago on May 3, where local authorities did not allow passengers or crew to disembark. On the same day, the first publicized reports of the spread of hantavirus on board appeared.
The first victim of hantavirus – a 70-year-old Dutchman – began to feel ill on April 6. He had a fever, headache, stomach ache and diarrhea. It gradually worsened, he developed acute respiratory distress and died on April 11. The exact cause of death could not be determined at the time and the ship continued to sail with his body on board for almost two weeks.
The operator of the MV Hondius, Oceanwide Expeditions, admitted on Thursday that 30 passengers disembarked on St. Helena after this first death. Until now, it has not informed at all about the disembarkation of some of them. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports up to 40 people. One of them was the wife of the deceased Dutchman, who accompanied his dead body and wanted to repatriate home by air. However, she herself later succumbed to the disease in the Republic of South Africa (JAR).
The authorities in South Africa are now trying to trace the persons who came into contact with the ship’s passengers. They are mainly focusing on the April 25 flight from Saint Helena to Johannesburg, which took place a day after the passengers from the MV Hondius disembarked there, and one of the passengers was the aforementioned Dutch woman. It is not known how many other cruise ship passengers were traveling with her, but the plane also carried her husband’s body. You can get from Saint Helena by air only once a week with a stopover in JAR.
It emerged on Wednesday that a man in Switzerland had been confirmed to have hantavirus after disembarking on St Helena, although his exact movements in the interim are unclear. On Thursday, Singaporean health authorities announced that they monitor two men who got off a ship on the island of St. Helena, flew to JAR and then home. They are currently isolated and undergoing tests. Authorities on St Helena said they were monitoring a smaller number of people they considered “risk contacts”. They must remain in isolation for 45 days.
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Thursday that registers five people infected with hantavirus, another three people suspected of it and three victims. She confirmed that a strain of the Andes virus was spreading on the ship. It is the only known hantavirus in which human-to-human transmission has been demonstrated. She emphasized that the current situation is not the beginning of an epidemic or a pandemic.
The Dutch couple who reported the first two cases took a bird-watching trip through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay before embarkingthe WHO said. They visited places where a species of rat known to carry the Andes virus is found.
The WHO is working with health authorities in Argentina to trace the movement of the couple and has arranged for 2,500 diagnostic kits to be shipped from Argentina to laboratories in five countries. The MV Hondius is sailing to Spain’s Canary Islands with more than 140 passengers and crew on board, where it is expected to arrive on Saturday or Sunday.
