A Deadly Outbreak of Hantavirus Has Stranded a Cruise Ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Here’s What to Know About the Rare Contagion
Three people have died in association with the vessel, and health officials have identified a total of two confirmed cases and five suspected cases of the infection. The virus usually spreads via infected rodent droppings
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The MV Hondius cruise ship, which just toured the southern Atlantic Ocean, is now stranded near Africa’s west coast while 147 passengers and crew face an outbreak of the rare hantavirus.
The World Health Organization announced two confirmed cases and five suspected cases of the virus as of May 4. That includes three individuals who have died, one of whom had disembarked the ship.
Viral outbreaks on cruise ships are not unheard of, as tight quarters for long durations allow the spread of highly contagious germs. In 2025, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted 23 outbreaks on ships that docked in the U.S. Most were attributed to norovirus, an easily spread pathogen that causes diarrhea and vomiting but typically isn’t lethal.
Hantavirus is different than typical cruise ship outbreaks, though. Most strains aren’t contagious between people.
“I don’t know of any other cases [of hantavirus] reported on a cruise ship before,” Emily Abdoler, an infectious diseases doctor at the University of Michigan Medical School, tells the New York Times’ Alexandra E. Petri and Livia Albeck-Ripka. “This is not a common infection, but it’s even less common to have the human spread raised as a possibility.”
Quick fact: Other recent hantavirus news
Last year, the rare illness made headlines because Betsy Arakawa, a classical musician, small-business owner and wife of actor Gene Hackman, died from the effects of hantavirus.
Hantavirus typically spreads through contact with the urine, saliva or feces of rodents. But one version, called the Andes virus, is suspected of passing from person to person, mostly in Argentina and Chile. The MV Hondius departed from southern Argentina a few weeks ago.
Overall, hantavirus is relatively rare, and health officials in the U.S. have documented only 890 cases in the country from 1993 through 2023. But the illness caused by the virus can be deadly.
After exposure to the virus, symptoms usually develop within one to eight weeks. First, an infected person experiences flu-like symptoms, such as fever, chills, muscle aches and headaches. Hantavirus can then cause two different syndromes.
One is hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, which can eventually lead to low blood pressure, a sudden drop in blood flow and kidney failure. This syndrome has a death rate of 1 to 15 percent. But, depending on the strain, the virus can also lead to the deadlier hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. With this condition, fluid can fill the lungs, and it can be difficult to breathe and keep a regular heartbeat. The hantavirus strain carried by deer mice—the predominant host in North America—typically causes the latter syndrome and has a death rate between 30 and 50 percent.
Jordan Herbst, who contracted hantavirus as a teenager in Bishop, California, tells the New York Times’ Simar Bajaj and Nina Agrawal that “I imagine it’s what drowning feels like. You’re trying to breathe, and you just can’t get the air in.” Herbst, now in his mid-20s, spent six days in a medically induced coma and was put on a machine that took over for his heart and lungs.
Health officials first detected hantavirus in the U.S. during an outbreak in the Southwest in 1993. From May through December of that year, the CDC identified 53 people with the illness, and 32 of them died. The sickness was initially mysterious, but when the agency consulted Navajo elders, they finally identified the cause. Since then, the illness has remained persistent but rare in the U.S., mostly occurring west of the Mississippi River. More recently, in 2012, thousands of visitors to Yosemite National Park were warned they might have been exposed.
“In the Americas, hantavirus infection is very serious, but it’s also quite rare,” Steven Bradfute, an immunologist at the University of New Mexico, tells the Associated Press’ Susan Montoya Bryan. “And so, for a time, that probably led to less research into it because of funding priorities, but I know there’s been a lot of interest in funding hantavirus work of late.”
No specific cure exists for hantavirus, but early medical attention can improve outcomes. Health officials recommend preventing infection in the first place by cleaning up rodent droppings with a bleach solution or other disinfectant and avoiding vacuuming, sweeping or otherwise disturbing the droppings in a way that could let the virus become airborne.
Rhys Parry, a molecular virologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, tells Nature’s Mohana Basu and Rachel Fieldhouse that the outbreak on the MV Hondius likely originated from contact with material from a contaminated rodent, since most strains of hantavirus spread via that route. More cruise ship cases might pop up too, since symptoms take a while to appear, he adds.
However, Daniel Bausch, an infectious diseases physician-scientist at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland, says that person-to-person spread of the Andes virus is a possibility.
“It’s significant that this cruise ship started its journey in Argentina,” Bausch tells Reuters’ Olivia Le Poidevin, Toby Sterling, Anthony Deutsch and Charlotte Van Campenhout. Still, since it doesn’t spread easily between people, “the good news is ... this is not going to be a big outbreak,” he adds.