South African scientists quickly identified a rare hantavirus outbreak aboard a Dutch cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean after an urgent email from a UK-based health official triggered an international effort involving experts from South America and the United States.
Dr. Lucille Blumberg, an infectious disease specialist at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), said the process began on May 1 after a passenger from the cruise ship MV Hondius was evacuated to a Johannesburg hospital with suspected pneumonia. Several others aboard the vessel had also fallen ill.
The passenger had been evacuated from Ascension Island, a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic, prompting concerns over a possible outbreak on the ship.
Blumberg said despite the public holiday in South Africa, experts moved swiftly to investigate the illness.
“At first, we considered diseases commonly linked to cruise ships, including Legionnaires’ disease and bird flu,” she said. However, tests for those illnesses and other respiratory infections all returned negative.
Investigators then focused on the ship’s travel history from Argentina and reports that passengers had visited bird-watching sites in South America where rodents were also present.
That led experts to suspect hantavirus, a rare rodent-borne disease known to exist in parts of Argentina and Chile. South African specialists collaborated with hantavirus experts in South America and the United States through the World Health Organization (WHO).
Blood tests later confirmed the British passenger was infected with the Andes strain of hantavirus, one of the few strains capable of human-to-human transmission, according to the WHO.
A Dutch woman who had also disembarked from the ship in St. Helena and later died in South Africa was posthumously confirmed to have the same virus.
The WHO subsequently informed the cruise ship about the outbreak. The MV Hondius later arrived in Rotterdam, where it underwent disinfection procedures before the remaining crew members disembarked.
South Africa’s health ministry said the British patient has shown signs of recovery.
Blumberg said the rapid response highlighted the importance of international cooperation in tackling infectious disease outbreaks.