WHO is racing to track down nearly 100 passengers who flew with a woman who unknowingly had hantavirus

The hantavirus cruise ship outbreak has now claimed three lives and left health officials scrambling across multiple countries.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is urgently trying to locate up to 98 passengers who shared a four-hour flight with a woman who died from hantavirus, after it emerged that neither she nor anyone else on the plane knew she was infected at the time.

As theGrio has reported, the WHO has been tracking a growing number of disease outbreaks requiring rapid international response, and health funding cuts have weakened outbreak infrastructure globally. Paddle Your Own Kanoo reported that the woman had been a passenger on the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius cruise ship, which departed from Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1, and has since been linked to a hantavirus cruise ship outbreak that has claimed three lives.

The first victim was the woman’s husband, who began experiencing fever, headache, and mild diarrhea on April 6. His condition rapidly deteriorated into respiratory distress, and he died on April 11. The ship sailed for 18 days before docking at the remote British overseas territory of St Helena, where his body was taken ashore. His wife accompanied the body, already showing gastrointestinal symptoms at that point.

The following day, she boarded an Airlink flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, a service that only operates about once per week. Her condition worsened during the flight and she died upon arrival at a hospital on April 26. Hantavirus was not confirmed via PCR testing until nine days later.

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The potential outbreak has grabbed the attention of the global community with many following closely and weighing in. Social media commentator @raeshanda_lias on Threads who has been closely following the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak, posted a thread breaking down the timeline for her followers. “At the time, they did not know that the virus was why they passed,” she wrote. “These two were not tested so at the time that she was on the plane, no one knew that she was sick from the hantavirus.” In a follow-up post, she added: “I want to go ahead and publicly apologize to my wife for making fun of them wiping down everything on the plane and still masking. We will now be masking during travel always.”

Dr. Boghuna K. Titanji, MD, MSc, DTM&H, PhD, who is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Emory University School of Medicine, also did a lengthy, multi-part breakdown of the situation on Threads based on her knowledge and research with hantaviruses.

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A third passenger, a woman aboard the ship, died on May 2 after a rapid onset of fever that progressed into pneumonia. One male passenger remains in intensive care in a South African hospital, and three additional suspected cases remain on board.

The WHO confirmed that the strain involved is the Andes virus, a type of hantavirus found in Argentina that, unlike most strains, has shown limited capacity for human-to-human transmission. The ship requested permission to dock in Cabo Verde but was turned away. Spain has since stepped in, inviting the vessel to sail to the Canary Islands where medical teams are being prepared to receive passengers.

The incubation period for hantavirus can extend up to eight weeks, meaning the full scope of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak may not yet be known. The WHO has assessed the global risk as low but says it will continue monitoring the situation as it develops.