Hantavirus Scare Over? What We Know As Last Cruise Ship Passengers Leave Quarantine

Last Updated:June 19, 2026, 17:32 IST

Six weeks, 13 cases, three dead, and one Florida woman who said she was being 'held hostage' — here is what actually happened aboard the MV Hondius.

Hantavirus Scare Over? What We Know As Last Cruise Ship Passengers Leave Quarantine

The last quarantine orders tied to the MV Hondius cruise ship hantavirus outbreak have lapsed, nearly seven weeks after a Dutch-flagged polar exploration vessel became the site of one of the most closely watched disease clusters since the early Covid years, and the passengers, all of them, are finally home.

There were 12 confirmed cases and one probable, across passengers and crew from 23 nationalities. Three people died. The ship had set off from Ushuaia in southern Argentina on 1 April 2026, headed into some of the most remote ocean on earth, Antarctica, South Georgia Island, Tristan da Cunha, Saint Helena, Ascension Island.

On 2 May, the WHO was notified of a cluster of severe respiratory illness aboard. By then, two passengers were already dead.

The pathogen was the Andes virus. A type of hantavirus which is the only strain of hantavirus known to spread from human to human. Hantaviruses typically move through rodent droppings. The Andes virus sometimes does not follow that rule.

That single biological fact is what turned a remote maritime medical emergency into an international public health response spanning at least a dozen countries.

The first death came quietly. A passenger’s body was removed from the vessel at Saint Helena on 24 April. His close contact, a woman, disembarked there with gastrointestinal symptoms and then deteriorated on a flight to Johannesburg. She died upon arrival at the emergency department on 26 April. Both cases were later confirmed by PCR.

Eighteen Americans were evacuated and flown to the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the same facility that had handled Covid repatriations from the Diamond Princess in 2020.

The 42-day clock started. Passengers across Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and South Africa entered their own arrangements.

The Politics Of The Case

Angela Perryman, 47, a Florida resident, said she had not had a single day in quarantine without crying. “I’m being held hostage in this power struggle between a state and the federal government," she told reporters.

CDC wanted home quarantine with monitoring. Florida’s health authorities resisted. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declined to sign off on her early release, with federal officials saying the quarantine would hold until the 42-day period ended on 21 June.

Twelve of the 18 Americans eventually left the Nebraska facility mid-quarantine, under strict conditions – no grocery runs, no takeout, and in several states, a monitor posted outside their homes around the clock. The remaining six stayed put until the window closed.

A separate group of Americans who had disembarked the Hondius earlier, before the outbreak was even identified, completed a 42-day monitoring period that ended on 6 June. No cases were detected. No further public health follow-up was required for them.

Saint Helena wrapped things up on 8 June. The remote British island of some 4,400 people, where early cases had come ashore, declared its major incident over. “All individuals who were identified as contacts and required to self-isolate have now successfully completed their mandatory 42-day isolation periods," the island’s government said, adding that there were no active, suspected, or confirmed cases and no further risk to the public.

The WHO chief confirmed this week that nearly all passengers and crew quarantined in the Netherlands have been cleared to leave. The MV Hondius had docked in Rotterdam on 18 May, its skeleton crew facing weeks of isolation after everyone was retested and disembarked.

What remains unresolved is more unsettling than the case count suggests. No vaccine exists for hantavirus. No specific treatment either. Whether the Hondius cluster was driven by rodent exposure on a remote island stopover or person-to-person transmission, or both is still under investigation.

The CDC’s formal position is that the risk of broader spread in the United States remains extremely low, and no American has tested positive.

About the Author

Anoshito Banerjee

Anoshito Banerjee is a digital journalist at CNN-News18, specialising in Indian foreign policy, global diplomacy, South and West Asian geopolitics, and strategic affairs. His reporting spans hard news...Read More

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