A suspected hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean has killed three people and sickened at least three others, the World Health Organization said Sunday.
In a statement to The Associated Press, the WHO said an investigation was underway but that at least one case of hantavirus had been confirmed. Hantavirus, found throughout the world, is spread by contact with urine or feces of infected rodents, most often rats or mice.
WHO didn’t identify the vessel, but South African media reports said the outbreak happened on the MV Hondius cruise ship while it was sailing from Argentina to Cape Verde off the coast of West Africa.
The MarineTraffic global shipping website identified the vessel as a Dutch-flagged passenger cruise ship. It located it as docked in Praia, the capital of Cape Verde, on Sunday night.
South African media, quoting South African health department spokesperson Foster Mohale, said the first victim, an elderly man, died on the ship. His wife later died in a South African hospital, Mohale said.
To each their own, cruises are a perfectly valid fair means of vacation. But a part of this thought during and after covid we would kind of sort of learn our lesson when it comes to cruise ships and how they’re just this petri dish floating in an ocean with thousands of people on board sneezing and wheezing coughing and now in this case being infected by the hantavirus ..
