How worried should you be? The cruise ship on which hantavirus had been spreading—the MV Hondius—docked over the weekend and let off its roughly 150 passengers. Medical repatriation flights have been arranged by most of the 23 countries with nationals aboard the ship. Another 32 passengers had already disembarked at an earlier stop (the Atlantic island of St. Helena, near Africa) and flew home on April 24, before the outbreak had been detected.
Three passengers died of hantavirus, which is typically contracted via exposure to rodent droppings, urine, or saliva. The people who died all appear to have had the Andes variant, which spreads via human-to-human contact. Hantaviruses can cause either hantavirus pulmonary syndrome or hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome; the type currently spreading is the former.
