Hantavirus: Operator says 30 passengers disembarked cruise ship on St Helena last month

LAST UPDATE | 33 mins ago

THIRTY PASSENGERS DISEMBARKED the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship on 24 April during a stopover on the remote island of St Helena in the Atlantic Ocean, the operator has said. 

The fate of the MV Hondius has sparked international concern after three people travelling on the ship died. 

Emergency crews evacuated three people – two sick crew members and another person who had been in contact with one of the confirmed cases – from the ship yesterday.

It is now expected to arrive in the Canary Islands in the coming days, with the rest of the passengers to be evacuated from Monday, 11 May. 

Oceanwide Expeditions today confirmed that 30 people, including the body of the passenger who died on board the ship on 11 April, disembarked on 24 April. It said the first confirmed case of hantavirus was not reported until 4 May.

The nationalities of two of the 30 are still unknown.

The rest are from Canada (2), Switzerland (2), Germany (1), Denmark (1), Britain (7), Netherlands (3), New Zealand (1), Saint Kitts and Nevis (1), Singapore (1), Sweden (1), Turkey (2) and the US (6).

The operator said all people who left the ship had been contacted, adding that they are working to establish the details of all passengers and crew who got on and off the ship on various stops since 20 March. 

The Saint Helena government said there were currently “no suspected or confirmed cases of hantavirus on the island”, and the risk to the public remained low.

The situation on St Helena remains stable and controlled.

As a precautionary measure, the local health authorities are monitoring a small number of individuals identified as higher-risk contacts – namely “those who had close, prolonged contact with the unwell passengers of the vessel”.

They have been advised to isolate at home, for a period of 45 days from the last known exposure to the virus. 

“This means that the period of isolation will end on June 9 subject to any developments in the situation in St Helena.”

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The British overseas territory has a population of around 4,400 people. “We are all by now aware of the challenge we face,” governor Nigel Phillips said in a statement.

“We are now responding to a crisis none of us would have wished.”

Former passengers isolating

Singapore’s Communicable Diseases Agency has said that two men aged 65 and 67 who had been on board the ship have been isolated as they await test results for hantavirus. Both arrived in Singapore in early May.

“One has a runny nose but is otherwise well, and the other is asymptomatic. The risk to the general public in Singapore is currently low,” the agency said.

Meanwhile, the Danish Patient Safety Authority also said a citizen who travelled on the ship is in self-quarantine. The person had returned to Denmark at the end of April.

The health authority said the person showed “no symptoms of illness” and the risk of them having contracted the virus was “low,” but it said it was in regular contact with the person and monitoring the situation.

Two people who returned to the UK from the ship have been advised to self-isolate, the UK Health Security Agency said, adding they were asymptomatic and insisting the risk to the public was “very low”.

This morning, a medical plane carrying two evacuated passengers landed at Amsterdam Airport in the Netherlands at 5.47pm GMT (6.47pm Irish time).

A plane believed to be carrying a sick passenger from the ship landed at Schiphol Airport at 7.54am Irish time, according to an AFP reporter on the scene.

Officials in Spain, where the flight made an unexpected stop on Gran Canaria island, confirmed that the patient “had been transferred to Amsterdam on a different medicalised aircraft” than the one scheduled.

Low global risk: WHO

Experts confirmed the version of the virus detected aboard the Hondius was a rare strain known as the Andes virus, the only one that can be transmitted between humans.

The first person to have the virus on the ship could not have been infected during the cruise, given the one- to six-week incubation period, WHO expert Anais Legand told AFP.

The ship left Ushuaia, Argentina, on 1 April, and the first death occurred on 11 April.

Argentine officials said the first couple who died had visited Chile, Uruguay and Argentina before the cruise.

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They said experts would travel to Ushuaia to test rodents there for hantavirus.

Argentina has seen an increase in hantavirus cases, but not an outbreak, expert Raul Gonzalez Ittig told AFP.

Health officials played down fears of a wider global outbreak from the virus, which is less contagious than Covid.

World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted the outbreak was not comparable to the Covid pandemic. told AFP it was not like the Covid-19 pandemic, adding: “The risk to the rest of the world is low.”

The EU meanwhile has said the risk to Europeans from hantavirus is low.

“I have to repeat that according to the evidence that we have at the moment, the risk for the public in Europe, the risk for the Europeans is low,” spokeswoman Eva Hrncirova said.

The ship has been at the centre of an international health scare since Saturday, when the WHO was informed that three passengers had died and the suspected cause was hantavirus.

The rare respiratory disease is usually spread from infected rodents, typically through urine, droppings and saliva.

A Dutch man died on board on 11 April, and his wife, who left the ship to accompany his body to South Africa, died there 15 days later after also falling ill.

Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia Gomez said the vessel would dock within the next three days in Tenerife, in the Canaries, and all foreign passengers would be flown back to their home countries from there if their health allowed.

© AFP 2026 

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