Health officials are closely monitoring a passenger who reportedly developed signs of hantavirus after sharing a flight with a suspected MV Hondius cruise case
A man who never set foot on the hantavirus‐hit cruise ship MV Hondius is believed to have contracted the deadly infection after sharing a flight with an infected passenger.
Health officials are understood to be closely monitoring the unnamed French traveller, who is being treated as a high‐risk contact after developing symptoms consistent with the rodent‐borne virus. He had unknowingly boarded the same flight as a Dutch woman who had disembarked the vessel with gastric complaints, before her infection was confirmed.
Airlink, the South African airline operating the route from Saint Helena to Johannesburg, said 82 passengers and six crew were on board. The World Health Organisation is now working to trace all those who shared the flight with the infected traveller, reports the Mirror.
To date, three individuals – a 70 year old Dutch man, his 69 year old wife, and a German woman – have died following the outbreak connected to the cruise vessel.
Former British police officer Martin Anstee, 56, along with two other cruise passengers, have reached the Netherlands for specialist medical care, while another patient is receiving treatment in Zurich, Switzerland.
The Swiss Health ministry stated that the University Hospital Zurich was “prepared to deal with such cases” and emphasised there is “currently no risk to the Swiss public”.
Health authorities in Argentina – from where the MV Hondius departed a month ago – are now investigating whether the outbreak originated within the country. The nation’s health ministry revealed yesterday that it will conduct rodent trapping and testing in Ushuaia, the port from which the vessel set sail.
The World Health Organisation consistently places Argentina at the top of Latin American nations for incidence rates of the uncommon, rodent-transmitted illness.
On Tuesday, the Argentine Health Ministry disclosed 101 hantavirus cases since June 2025, approximately twice the number documented during the corresponding period in the preceding year.
In South America, a strain known as the Andes virus can trigger a serious and frequently fatal respiratory condition called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. According to Argentina’s Health Ministry, the illness proved fatal in almost a third of cases over the past year, a significant increase from an average rate of 15 in the five years prior.
Hugo Pizzi, a leading Argentine infectious disease expert, commented: “Argentina has become more tropical because of climate change, and that has brought disruptions, like dengue and yellow fever, but also new tropical plants that produce seeds for mice to proliferate. There is no doubt that as time goes by, the hantavirus is spreading more and more.”
Hantavirus typically transmits through breathing in contaminated rodent faeces. While human-to-human transmission can occur, the World Health Organisation states this is uncommon, with their leading epidemic specialist confirming the threat to the general public remains minimal.
The Andes strain – identified amongst positive test samples aboard the MV Hondius – represents the sole hantavirus variant known to pass between humans. The virus has an incubation period ranging from one to eight weeks.
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