The United States was on Thursday among the countries urgently tracking dozens of passengers who traveled on the cruise ship at the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak.
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The luxury cruise has fueled a growing international infectious disease response, after the deaths of three people and suspected infections of at least five more. A possible new case also emerged Thursday, apparently involving a woman who had not been a passenger on the ship.
Weeks after the first death on board, 30 passengers left the ship without contact tracing in St. Helena, a tiny and remote island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said in a statement Thursday.
The company said it was “working to establish” the whereabouts of all those who disembarked on April 24 and had contacted each of them. It said the number included six Americans.
One person who was on board the Hondius is at home in Arizona, two are in Georgia and an unknown number are back in California, according to authorities in those states — none were said to be showing symptoms of the rare virus.
The 30 include 11 other nationalities but the parent country of two people is unknown.
It also emerged Thursday that a flight attendant was being tested for hantavirus at a hospital in the Netherlands.
“I can confirm that a stewardess is in hospital now and she is being tested for the virus,” a spokesperson for the Dutch Health Ministry told NBC News. The department did not say whether she was ill or showing symptoms of the virus, which is rare but potentially deadly.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines said Wednesday that a Dutch woman who died after contracting hantavirus was “briefly” on board a flight from Johannesburg to Amsterdam and was removed from the plane before takeoff.
It is not clear if the flight attendant was on this same flight. KLM said in a statement it does not comment on individual cases “for privacy reasons.”
The World Health Organization and national health officials have repeatedly stressed that the risk to the public is low and person-to-person transmission was only possible through close personal contact, such as between a couple.
Hantavirus is typically contracted through contact with rodents. The WHO however confirmed this week that the outbreak is the Andes strain of the virus which, unlike other strains, is known to be transmissible between people.
Health experts have said that even this strain is not as easily passed on as airborne diseases such as influenza or Covid-19.
A travel vlogger on board the Hondius told NBC News that passengers were “not well informed” about the situation on board. He recorded video of the captain telling passengers that the ship was “not infectious” after announcing the first death.
Almost 150 people are still on board the Hondius under isolation protocols as the ship makes its way north from Cape Verde in western Africa to the Spanish-controlled Canary Islands. The journey is expected to last three to four days, though there is reluctance from the leader of the islands’ regional government to accept the ship.
On Monday, Oceanwide said there were 17 Americans on board. The CDC said in a statement Wednesday night that both it and the State Department were closely monitoring the status of Americans who had been on the ship.
“The Department of State is leading a coordinated, whole-of-government response including direct contact with passengers, diplomatic coordination, and engagement with domestic and international health authorities,” the statement said.
The CDC added that the “risk to the American public is extremely low.”
The three people to have died so far are a Dutch couple and a German national, while a British man is being treated in hospital in South Africa. It emerged Wednesday that a man who had left the ship was being treated in Zurich with suspected hantavirus.
Three patients were transported from the Hondius on Wednesday for medical treatment in the Netherlands and Germany, as health officials switch their focus to finding and monitoring the dozens of people who left the ship along its voyage.
Hantavirus infection in humans is extremely rare and has never been previously recorded on a cruise ship. The CDC monitors the disease and its data show that there were 890 confirmed cases between 1993 and 2023.
Argentinian authorities said that a program of rodent trapping would take place in the city of Ushuaia, where the Hondius began its journey, and that it would carry out 2,500 diagnostic tests to try to find the origin of the outbreak.