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Another sick passenger from the hantavirus-affected MV Hondius cruise ship landed in Amsterdam on Thursday, as European health authorities continued to trace contacts from a rare Andes virus outbreak that has killed three people and spread concern across several countries.
The Netherlands-based operator Oceanwide Expeditions said the vessel was now sailing toward Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands, with no symptomatic people currently on board. The ship is expected to reach Tenerife on Saturday, where remaining passengers without symptoms may be allowed to disembark.
The outbreak has drawn international attention because the Andes strain of hantavirus, detected in cases linked to the ship, is one of the rare hantavirus strains known to spread between humans. Health officials have stressed, however, that such transmission is uncommon and usually requires very close contact.
People linked to the ship are now being treated or isolating in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and South Africa.
The latest medical evacuation reached Schiphol Airport on Thursday morning, a day after other passengers were flown out of Cape Verde for treatment or isolation in Europe.
Dutch media reported that the Thursday evacuee was likely a 41-year-old Dutch man. Ambulances met the flight at Schiphol, though authorities did not disclose where he would be treated.
Two evacuees who landed at Schiphol on Wednesday evening were taken to hospitals in Leiden and Dusseldorf. The patient transferred to Leiden University Medical Center was identified in Dutch reports as a 56-year-old British crew member, Martin Anstee, who told Sky News he was feeling okay but remained in isolation while being tested.
The German patient is believed to be a 65-year-old woman closely related to one of the passengers who died. German emergency services said she was stable and had no hantavirus symptoms.
A Swiss national with symptoms was also admitted to a hospital in Zurich on Wednesday, while his partner entered self-isolation as a precaution.
Dutch health authorities are also monitoring a KLM flight attendant from Haarlem who has been hospitalized at Amsterdam University Medical Center after possible contact with a Dutch woman who later died of hantavirus in Johannesburg.
The woman, 69, had boarded a KLM aircraft at Johannesburg's O.R. Tambo International Airport on April 25 but was removed before takeoff because she was deemed too ill to fly. The flight then departed for Amsterdam later that night.
The KLM flight attendant who worked on that flight has mild symptoms and is being tested for hantavirus, the Dutch Ministry of Public Health confirmed to RTL Nieuws.
Dutch public health services are working to contact passengers who were on the KLM flight and advise them to watch for symptoms. According to the Netherlands’ public health institute RIVM, symptoms can appear within a few days but may take up to 60 days, with the average incubation period ranging from two to four weeks.
The outbreak is believed to have begun after a passenger contracted the virus before boarding the MV Hondius in Argentina. The ship had sailed from the coastal city of Ushuaia on April 1 before crossing the Atlantic.
A Dutch man who had boarded with his wife died on the ship on April 11. Passengers were initially told he had died of natural causes, according to Turkish travel vlogger Ruhi Cenet, who was aboard the vessel.
His body was removed from the ship on April 24 in Saint Helena, where 29 other passengers also disembarked. His wife, who had left the ship to accompany his body to South Africa, later became ill and died in Johannesburg on April 26. Hantavirus was confirmed as the cause on May 4.
South African authorities have been tracing people who may have come into contact with her, including passengers and crew on an Airlink flight from Saint Helena to Johannesburg. Airlink said that flight carried 82 passengers and six crew members.
Another British passenger from the cruise remains in intensive care in South Africa after testing positive for hantavirus.
Oceanwide Expeditions said it was working to establish details of all passengers and crew who had embarked and disembarked from the Hondius at different points since March 20.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said seven cases have been linked to the Hondius, including the three deaths.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told AFP that “the risk to the rest of the world is low,” while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the risk to the American public was “extremely low.”
The U.K. Health Security Agency also said two people who returned to Britain from the ship had been advised to self-isolate, but were asymptomatic, and that the risk to the public remained “very low.”
Hantavirus infections are rare and are usually linked to contact with infected rodents, their urine, droppings, or saliva. The virus can cause severe respiratory and cardiac illness, as well as hemorrhagic fevers. There is no vaccine and no specific cure, so treatment focuses on supporting patients through respiratory, heart or kidney complications.
The Andes strain, found in South America, is unusual because limited human-to-human transmission has been documented, usually among spouses, household contacts, or people in very close contact.
Argentine officials said they plan to test rodents in Ushuaia, from where the ship began its voyage, as investigators try to determine how the first passenger may have been exposed.
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