You’re listening to Stache. Here’s your update on the hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius.
The Dutch-flagged cruise ship, which left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1st, completed its disembarkation at the port of Tenerife twenty-four hours ago. Repatriation across more than twenty countries is now underway.
As of May 11th, ten cases, confirmed or probable, have been recorded on board. Three people have died, two deaths formally linked to the virus. A Spanish passenger, isolated in Madrid, has tested provisionally positive, bringing the likely total to eleven.
Eighteen Americans are back in the United States, two of them placed in biocontainment units in Omaha and Atlanta. In France, one repatriated woman has tested positive and her condition is worsening. Twenty British nationals, one German, and one Japanese passenger are isolated in northwest England.
The pathogen has been identified as the Andes virus, the only hantavirus known to transmit from person to person, and only through close, prolonged contact. There is no approved vaccine.
The World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control both assess the public risk as very low. But the WHO warns that more cases may emerge: incubation can extend up to forty-five days.
Argentine authorities are now investigating the movements of the index case, a Dutch citizen, across Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina in the months before departure. The Malbrán Institute is testing rodents along that route.
The MV Hondius, with around thirty crew members still on board, is sailing on toward Rotterdam, expected on May 17th.
This was your Stache briefing. We will keep monitoring the story.
