A manhunt is underway to locate a missing British passenger who fled a disease-struck cruise ship – as fears mount that hundreds of people may have come in contact with infectious carriers of the deadly rat-borne illness.
Health authorities say seven British nationals disembarked the MV Hondius on April 24 – while two have returned to the UK and are self-isolating at home, four remain in St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.
However, the location of a seventh individual remains unknown.
It comes as an air stewardess is feared to have caught hantavirus after travelling on a flight that an infected Dutch woman tried to board.
The passenger, a 69-year-old widow, was trying to fly home from South Africa and died the next day.
If the stewardess is confirmed to have been infected, it will fuel fears that the virus will spread beyond passengers who were on the cruise ship where the outbreak began.
A guest still stuck on the MV Hondius has also revealed that social distancing has only been in place for three days, with staff organising a ‘big barbecue as if nothing had happened’, despite the deadly rat-borne virus.
Three people have died after becoming infected with the hantavirus on the vessel, currently on its way to the Canary Islands to evacuate passengers after being stranded for days in Cape Verde.
The evacuation of the remaining 146 passengers has been delayed after the president of the Canaries refused to let the ship dock at the archipelago for fear of contaminating the civilian population.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is attempting to locate at least 69 people who may have come into contact with the 69-year-old Dutch woman, who boarded two flights before she died of the virus in South Africa on April 26.
A Frenchman is believed to have had contact with the former passenger on the Airlink flight from St Helena to Johannesburg on April 25, and is being monitored by health authorities.
It comes as:
- The WHO has warned that there could be more hantavirus cases around the world, but assured that the outbreak is not expected to be an epidemic
- Two Brits who were evacuated from the cruise are improving, health officials say
- Two doctors are on board, along with infectious disease experts who are conducting a medical assessment of passengers
- It emerged that dozens of passengers disembarked the cruise without contact tracing after the first person died
A potential Dutch patient leaves the aircraft after three medical evacuees from the cruise ship MV Hondius arrived at Schiphol-East airport in Schiphol, Netherlands, May 6
The Argentine government’s leading hypothesis is that a Dutch couple who died had contracted Hantavirus during a bird-watching outing at a garbage dump in Ushuaia, Argentina. Above, a rubbish site in the city (file photo)
The woman then boarded a second flight to Amsterdam, but was prevented from flying after the crew grew concerned at how ill she appeared.
Now, a Dutch flight attendant with ‘mild symptoms’ has been hospitalised due to possible hantavirus, following contact with the passenger who passed away a day later.
‘People are not panicking, but you can feel that it is starting to weigh on you, especially since we don’t know where we are going,’ a French passenger, still stuck on the luxury vessel, told BFM TV.
While masks are mandatory, she insists there is no lockdown. ‘We all eat together at the restaurant. There’s social distancing, but it’s only been in place for three days; we eat seated in a staggered pattern,’ she said.
‘There was a big barbecue on the boat, as if nothing had happened. After that, we do what we want on the boat.’
Concern has arisen about passengers who already disembarked from the MV Hondius to return home, without realising they may have contracted hantavirus and spread it around the world.
Some 29 passengers left the luxury cruise ship on April 24 on the island of St Helena, 13 days following the first death on board, before returning to countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Singapore and Denmark.
While those remaining on the vessel are following strict hygiene measures, others resumed normal life, not realising they may be carrying the rare illness.
‘The Australian went back to Australia, the one from Taiwan to Taiwan, the Americans to all corners of North America. The Englishman to England, the Dutch to their homes… I don’t remember the rest, but no Spaniards,’ a Spanish passenger still on board the ship told the newspaper, El Pais.
Seven of the guests who left the ship early were British, it has emerged today, and two are already self-isolating at home in the UK after potential exposure to the virus, which has a 40 per cent mortality rate.
In a statement, UK Health Security Agency said: ‘Two of these individuals are now self-isolating in the UK while the others have not yet returned.
‘Four of these individuals remain in St Helena and we are in touch with the relevant health officials to provide advice on contact management.’
Tracing efforts are continuing for the seventh individual, who has not yet returned to the UK, the agency said.
After boarding the vessel in Ushuaia, Argentina, American passengers who disembarked from the cruise early after its first leg are being monitored in Georgia, California and Arizona.
A Danish citizen who travelled on the MV Hondius and also disembarked on April 24 has gone into self-quarantine, the Danish Patient Safety Authority said Thursday.
The health authority said the person showed ‘no symptoms of illness’, adding that the authority was in contact with the person who had gone into ‘self-isolation’.
The person, whose age and gender were not disclosed, had returned to Denmark at the end of April and had not been in close contact with the people on the MV Hondius who developed the disease.
In the health agency’s assessment, the risk of the person having contracted the virus was ‘low’, but it said it was in regular contact with the person and monitoring the situation.
It comes as the head of the WHO warned that there could be more hantavirus cases around the world.
Speaking during a press briefing from Geneva on Thursday, Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that five of the eight suspected cases of hantavirus linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship have now been confirmed.
He added that the WHO was aware of reports of other patients and that there may be more cases due to the long incubation period of the virus.
Speaking to reporters, Dr Tedros said: ‘Last Saturday, the United Kingdom notified WHO, under the International Health Regulations, of a cluster of passengers with severe respiratory illness on a Dutch-flagged cruise ship, the MV Hondius, which had travelled from Argentina to Cape Verde.
‘So far, eight cases have been reported, including three deaths.
‘Five of the eight cases have been confirmed as hantavirus, and the other three are suspected.’
He added: ‘Given the incubation period of the Andes Virus, which can be up to six weeks, it’s possible that more cases may be reported.
‘While this is a serious incident, WHO assesses the public health risk as low.’
Separately, Dr Abdirahman Mahamud, director at the alert and response co-ordination department of the WHO’s Emergencies Health Programme, said that the outbreak of hantavirus is not expected to be an epidemic.
Highlighting a similar outbreak in Argentina in 2018/19, which led to 34 cases, he said: ‘If we follow public health measures, and the lessons we learned from Argentina are shared across all countries… we can break this chain of transmission, and this doesn’t need to be a large epidemic.’
He added: ‘We don’t anticipate a large epidemic. With the experience our member states have, and the actions they have taken, we believe that this will not lead to a subsequent chain of transmission.’
The MV Hondius has been at the centre of an international health scare since Saturday, when the UN’s health agency was informed that three passengers had died and the suspected cause was hantavirus.
Cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said earlier on Thursday that 30 passengers of at least 12 different nationalities had left the cruise during a stopover on April 24 on the British island of St Helena.
The deadly outbreak that has wreaked havoc aboard the cruise ship is believed to have originated in a seagull-plagued rubbish tip in the Argentine town known as ‘the end of the world’.
The country’s government’s leading hypothesis is that a Dutch couple who died had contracted the virus during a bird-watching outing at a garbage dump in Ushuaia before boarding the vessel.
The first two cases ‘travelled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a birdwatching trip which included visits to sites where the species of rat known to carry the virus was present,’ said Dr Tedros.
Three people were successfully evacuated from the MV Hondius on Wednesday to the Netherlands for treatment, including 56-year-old British man Martin Anstee.
The former police officer was the expedition guide on the cruise ship and is currently receiving treatment in the Netherlands, alongside his 41-year-old Dutch colleague.
‘I’m doing okay. I’m not feeling too bad. There are still lots of tests to be done. I have no idea how long I’ll be in the hospital for. I’m in isolation at the moment,’ Anstee told Sky News.
A 65-year-old German passenger was also evacuated and has been taken to the Dusseldorf University Hospital in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Another man who returned home after the first leg of the trip in late April tested positive in Zurich, Switzerland and is receiving medical attention.
And two Singapore residents who had been on board the cruise ship have been isolated as they await test results for the disease.
‘Two Singapore residents had been on board the cruise ship MV Hondius, which has reported an outbreak of Andes hantavirus. Both individuals have been isolated at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, where they are being tested for hantavirus,’ the Communicable Diseases Agency statement said on Thursday.
‘Their test results are pending. One has a runny nose but is otherwise well, and the other is asymptomatic. The risk to the general public in Singapore is currently low.’
A total of 146 people from 23 nationalities are still on board the ship, which departed Cape Verde at 6.15pm on Wednesday and is now heading north.
Under the current plan, the vessel will sail for the Canary Islands and dock at Tenerife’s Granadilla port in around three days, where the remaining passengers will be sent home to quarantine for up to eight weeks.
Health personnel assisting patients onto a boat from the cruise ship MV Hondius, while stationary off the port of Praia
Health authorities said passengers on the MV Hondius ship tested positive for the Andes strain of the hantavirus.
While people usually become infected with hantavirus through contact with infected rodents or their urine, their droppings or their saliva, the Andes strain is spreadable between humans.
Professor Robin May, chief scientific officer at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said hantaviruses as a group are widespread around the world.
‘This one, in particular, the Andean strain, is the only one for which there is some evidence in the past of human-to-human transmission, and so that’s obviously our primary focus here,’ he told BBC Breakfast.
He said it has been studied intently because it is ‘such a severe disease’ and there are efforts globally to try to develop vaccines against it.
Professor May added: ‘So with all transmissible diseases, we undertake contact tracing after the first case is identified. And this one, of course, has been a very intense effort…
‘From the first identification, we’ve been tracing individuals on the boat, contacts they have made on shore in South America who may have been associated and, of course, for the individuals who’ve returned home, earlier contacts they have made too on the flights or since they’ve been at home.
‘So it’s been quite a mammoth effort. We will continue to do that if other information arises.’
He said: ‘This is not a virus that spreads easily between humans,’ but given it can spread between individuals and he added, ‘We are contact tracing everyone who might have been in close contact.’
The outbreak of the rare, rat-borne illness that has a 40 per cent mortality rate has left three people dead and several others seriously ill
The cruise first set sail from Ushuaia in Argentina on April 1, destined for Cape Verde, and cost £10,000 per person.
Now, experts in Argentina are scrambling to determine if their country was the source of the deadly outbreak, and are sending genetic material from the Andes virus and testing equipment to aid Spain, Senegal, South Africa, the Netherlands and the UK in detecting it.
Officials are investigating whether the rat-borne virus was brought onto the vessel by the birdwatching Dutch couple, who apparently visited a landfill site to snap birds in the city of Ushuaia before boarding the cruise.
The Ushuaia landfill is a popular, albeit unconventional, birdwatching site as it attracts rare Patagonian species that are difficult to spot elsewhere, such as the White-bellied Seedsnipe, as well as seagulls.
Before boarding, the Dutch couple went sightseeing in Ushuaia and travelled elsewhere in Argentina and Chile, the WHO said.
Ushuaia is the capital of Tierra del Fuego, where the vessel docked for weeks before departing. The province has never seen a case of hantavirus.
There, holidaymakers can enjoy breathtaking cruises along the Beagle Channel, hiking in Tierra del Fuego National Park, skiing at Cerro Castor, and unique wildlife spotting, including penguins and sea lions.
Argentina has the highest incidence of hantavirus in Latin America, recording 101 infections since June 2025 – roughly double that of the year before.
The Andes strain can cause severe and often fatal lung disease called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.
Forensics are seen leaving an aircraft after a patient was evacuated at Schiphol-East airport, near Amsterdam on May 6
Spain’s Canary Islands expressed opposition to allowing the cruise to dock on the archipelago, fearing a possible outbreak in the community
The first stricken passenger, a 70-year-old Dutch man, died on April 11 as the ship steamed towards Tristan da Cunha.
His body remained on board until April 24, when it ‘was disembarked on St Helena, with his wife accompanying the repatriation’, Oceanwide Expeditions said.
The man’s 69-year-old wife later felt sick on a flight from St Helena to South Africa, and she died on April 26 upon arrival at the emergency department of Johannesburg hospital.
The next day, a British passenger on the cruise became ‘seriously ill and was medically evacuated to South Africa’, the company said.
On May 2, another passenger of German nationality died on board the ship.
The MV Hondius is expected to reach Tenerife on Saturday, where it will dock after Spain agreed to requests from the WHO to receive it despite protests from the local government.
The UN health body insists the risk to the public remains low and the variant detected among passengers can spread between humans only through close, prolonged contact.
Nevertheless, the arrival of the ship is reviving memories for residents of Spain’s Canary Islands of the quarantines they experienced during the Covid pandemic.
The archipelago was one of the first places in Europe to undergo quarantines during the early days of the pandemic, with more than 700 holidaymakers stranded in a hotel in Tenerife for 14 days in February 2020 after authorities cloistered the compound to prevent the spread of the virus.
‘We are a community that’s already quite flexible when it comes to helping others and being accommodating to people, but I think this is excessive,’ said local resident Margarita Maria, 62.
‘People are scared, people are worried. Spain is a huge country with plenty of ports where the cruise ship could go.’
The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, fiercely opposed the Spanish government’s decision to allow the Dutch MV Hondius vessel to dock on the archipelago, insisting it wasn’t safe for the local population.
‘I cannot allow it to enter the Canary Islands,’ he said, adding that the ‘decision is not based on any technical criteria and nor have we been given enough information’.
Clavijo also criticised the Spanish government for its ‘institutional disloyalty’ and lack of professionalism for failing to keep him informed.
Forensics leaving an aircraft after a patient was evacuated at Schiphol-East airport
Passengers remain on board the stationary cruise ship MV Hondius, which is off the port of Praia, the capital of Cape Verde, on Wednesday
Medics escort patients, who have been evacuated from the MV Hondius cruise ship, to an ambulance after being flown to Schiphol-East airport on Wednesday
According to the UK Government’s hantavirus advice, symptoms typically appear between two and four weeks after exposure, but can range from two days to eight weeks, meaning illness may develop in other passengers in the coming days or weeks.
Early symptoms can include fatigue, fever, muscle aches and intense headaches.
They are not usually spread person-to-person and are typically only transferred via bodily fluids and close contact.
Footage from Wednesday’s evacuation showed medics wearing hazmat suits boarding the luxury MV Hondius off the coast of Cape Verde, in a desperate attempt to get three patients to specialist treatment in Europe.
Separate videos and images show the patients – also wearing personal protective equipment – lying on stretchers as they are wheeled into an ambulance.
The vessel has been at the centre of an international health scare since Saturday, when the WHO was informed that the rare disease was suspected of being behind the deaths of three of its passengers.
As others fell ill, passengers and crew have been in isolation after Cape Verde authorities barred the ship from docking. The ship has been anchored just off the island nation’s capital, Praia, for days.
New footage from inside the vessel showed the ship’s decks mostly deserted, with only a few people wearing medical masks moving about.
Common spaces were empty as passengers were isolated in their cabins.
Another video shared on social media by Turkish influencer Ruhi Cenet shows the moment the vessel’s crew told passengers someone had died.
Footage shows a crew member saying: ‘One of our passengers sadly passed away last night.
‘I’m told by the doctor we’re not infectious. The ship is safe when it comes to that.’
But the video then cuts to Cenet telling the camera that ‘the situation was much worse than we were told,’ as he explains that a day after he left the ship, the wife of the person who had died also passed away.
‘After a third person died, it became clear that there was hantavirus on board,’ he added.
