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Hantavirus Outbreak on Cruise Ship Triggers CDC Emergency
(MENAFN) US health authorities are racing to contain a rare and deadly hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship, mobilizing emergency personnel and arranging repatriation flights as infected American passengers brace for weeks of strict quarantine monitoring upon their return home, according to an American newspaper.
The vessel is set to make port Sunday in Tenerife, in Spain's Canary Islands, where US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) staff have already been deployed to attend to 17 American nationals still aboard, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. The US State Department is coordinating a dedicated repatriation flight, after which passengers will be transferred to the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha for extended observation.
The MV Hondius — carrying roughly 150 passengers and crew drawn from 23 countries — had originally set sail from Argentina before crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Alarm bells sounded when a cluster of respiratory illnesses was reported while the ship was navigating waters near Cape Verde, off the coast of West Africa.
The CDC has designated the situation a Level 3 emergency response, representing the agency's lowest formal emergency activation threshold, though officials have stressed the severity of the pathogen involved.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed five cases of infection tied to the Andes strain of hantavirus, a rare and particularly dangerous variant — the only known form of the virus capable of spreading directly between humans, typically through prolonged close contact. Three of those cases have proven fatal.
WHO officials further noted that two of the passengers who subsequently died had traveled through Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay prior to boarding the ship — a detail investigators consider significant in tracing the outbreak's origin.
Reflecting the virus's lengthy incubation window, CDC officials have mandated approximately six weeks of monitoring for returning passengers. Health authorities across multiple US states are simultaneously tracking individuals who disembarked from the vessel before the outbreak was formally identified, in a bid to prevent any potential further spread.
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