They boarded a luxury cruise ship. Then hantavirus took a deadly toll
Hantavirus is suspected to have spread on a luxury cruise ship, killing three passengers and raising new concerns as a once-unknown disease with an extraordinarily high mortality rate increases under a changing climate.
Authorities are still trying to determine what happened on the ship, which cost up to $28,845 for the 46-day voyage, which included a tour of the Antarctic Peninsula and a stop in Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of Argentina.
In addition to the three deaths, a fourth passenger was taken to a hospital in South Africa and placed in intensive care, and two crew members fell ill. The Dutch-flagged ship remained off the coast of Cape Verde, an island nation about 650 kilometers west of Senegal, where it was scheduled to dock on Monday.
The World Health Organization says Hantavirus is extremely rare in the Americas, but its high case fatality rate makes it a significant public health problem. Hantavirus is more common in Asia and Europe, where circulating strains are less lethal, with a case fatality rate ranging from 1% to 15%.
Hantavirus is most commonly spread through inhalation of particles contaminated with the virus (such as dried mouse urine, saliva, or feces).
However, there is a strain of hantavirus known as Andean virus that can be transmitted from person to person and is transmitted in Thailand and Argentina.
It is unclear which strain of hantavirus hit the ship.
The ship operator said the first death on the ship occurred somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean on April 11, and the cause of the man’s death could not be determined on the ship. The body was transferred from the ship on April 24 when it docked on Saint Helena Island, about 1,800 miles off Africa, and the man’s wife accompanied him to his body.
His wife fell ill on the way home and later died. The cruise ship operator was notified of the woman’s death on April 27. The couple were Dutch citizens. On the same day, another passenger, a British national, also became seriously ill on board and was medically evacuated to South Africa. This patient was confirmed to have hantavirus.
A German passenger died on the ship on Saturday. On Monday, the ship operator said two crew members, one British and one Dutch, showed acute respiratory symptoms, one mild and one severe, but both required urgent medical care.
UC San Francisco infectious diseases specialist Dr. Possibilities that could explain the suspected outbreak include rodents boarding the ship and exposing people to the virus, or person-to-person transmission, according to Peter Chin-Hong.
“Could a cruise member be cleaning an area and accidentally scatter some rodent droppings into the air?” Kaiser Permanente Southern California regional infectious diseases physician Dr. Elizabeth Hudson asked: “Was there a shore excursion where passengers and crew were exposed to aerosolized rodent feces?”
Because hantavirus is so rare, it’s hard to say what impact these deaths will have on the cruise industry. COVID-19 hit the industry hard, but it was a global pandemic with a virus that spread rapidly through human-to-human contact. The key question for researchers is how the virus spreads.
MV Hondius is operated by Oceanwide Expeditions, which has a fleet of four ships and bills itself as a cruise ship eco-tour operator offering trips to the Arctic and Antarctica. Hondius can carry 170 passengers in 80 cabins.
As of Monday, there were 148 people on the ship, including 17 American passengers. One deceased passenger remained on board.
MV Hondius departed from Ushuaia, the capital of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of Argentina, on a round trip to the Antarctic Peninsula on March 20 and returned to port 11 days later. On April 1, the ship left Argentina and arrived at the South Georgian islands of Tristan de Cunha and St. George in the Atlantic Ocean. He returned to Cape Verde, stopping in St. Helena.
Chin-Hong said that the hantavirus strains in the Americas are drawn into the small blood vessels in the lungs, causing the blood vessels to leak, which is bad because the lungs need air.
“So people can’t breathe,” he said. “It’s like you’re drowning. The lungs are leaky, so fluid fills the lungs.”
There are 50 types of Hantavirus. Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Special Pathogens, Dr. Gaby Frank said the virus, found in the Americas, tends to cause cardiopulmonary syndrome, a condition that affects both the heart and lungs.
Hantavirus is associated with a case fatality rate of up to 50% in the Americas. This was the cause of Gene Hackman’s death His wife, 65-year-old Betsy ArakawaAt their home in Santa Fe, NM. Arakawa died days before Hackman, 95, died of heart disease. There were signs of rodent intrusion into some structures on the couple’s property. Last year, Three in Mammoth Lakes He died after contracting hantavirus. There was evidence of rats where the three deceased people worked, and one person had multiple rats in his home, according to the public health office in Mono County, home to Mammoth Lakes.
There is no vaccine or specific antiviral drug against hantavirus. In America, doctors can help infected people by putting them on a life support machine known as ECMO for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, which allows the patient to breathe by keeping the blood oxygenated. “It’s very, very intense, and that’s why the death rate is so high,” Chin-Hong said.
Some experts expect hantavirus to become more of a concern in the future in some parts of the world due to climate change; because rising temperatures are favorable to animals and insects that carry diseases, such as Lyme disease, as the climate becomes more suitable for the ticks that transmit it.
Given that precipitation patterns change as global temperatures rise, “then you would expect the rodent population to increase over time,” Chin-Hong said. “Given climate change over time, you would expect the rodent population to increase over time,” Chin-Hong said. Examples include people falling ill and dying from mouse-borne diseases such as leptospirosis after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017.
An average of 30 cases of hantavirus are reported annually in the United States, and that number has remained relatively stable. But Hudson said “the media is paying more attention to this issue.”
Times writer Karen Garcia contributed to this report.
