Two passengers evacuated from the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius tested positive for the deadly Andes strain, one while airborne to Paris, the other while flying back to the United States, raising hard questions about an evacuation plan that skipped onboard testing and relied on temperature checks to screen a shipload of potentially infected travelers.
The French woman began developing symptoms mid-flight on Sunday. A U.S. citizen tested positive that same night as he flew home. Both had left the Dutch-flagged cruise liner in Tenerife roughly ten hours apart, part of a nationality-by-nationality evacuation that Spanish and World Health Organization officials had assured the public was safe because every passenger aboard was "asymptomatic."
None of the passengers were tested for hantavirus on board. Instead, public health workers in hazmat suits checked temperatures, asked questions, and screened for irregular symptoms before waving evacuees onto chartered flights to their home countries. The stated rationale: the virus can take up to eight weeks to incubate, and officials wanted to avoid false positives. The priority, officials said, was to move asymptomatic passengers off the ship quickly so they could be "tested and monitored in their home countries."
That strategy now looks like a gamble that did not pay off.
The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1 for a 35-day Atlantic Odyssey. Within days, the trip turned into a rolling public health crisis. The first passenger to die was 70-year-old Dutch ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, who is believed to have caught the virus from an Argentinian rat after visiting a landfill site on March 27. He had boarded the ship with his wife Mirjam, 69. He died on April 11.
His widow accompanied his body from the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena to Johannesburg on April 24. The next day she boarded a KLM flight to Amsterdam but was refused permission to fly because her medical condition had deteriorated. She was taken to a hospital on April 26 and died.
A 69-year-old British tourist was evacuated from the ship between Saint Helena and Ascension Island on April 27 and flown to Johannesburg, where he remained in intensive care. On May 2, a German national became the third passenger to die aboard the vessel. The ship arrived in Cape Verde on May 3 but was refused permission to dock because of the outbreak.
Three more people were evacuated on May 6, including 56-year-old British tour guide and wildlife photographer Martin Anstee, and flown to the Netherlands for urgent medical care. The ship then set sail for the Canary Islands.
By May 7, officials were tracing 29 passengers from at least 12 countries who had already left the ship at earlier ports. All were eventually located. On May 8, as the MV Hondius prepared to reach Tenerife, protests erupted on the island. A third Brit, on the remote island of Tristan da Cunha, also tested positive that day.
The local Canary Islands government wanted to block the ship on health grounds. The central Spanish government overruled them.
The ship anchored 600 yards offshore just after 6 a.m. on May 10. Public health workers sailed out in hazmat suits, boarded, and began screening passengers. Spaniards started evacuating at around 9:40 a.m. The operation moved in nationality-based groups: Spain, France, Canada, the Netherlands, then Britain.
Some 20 British citizens were taken by military bus from the Port of Granadilla to the island's south airport and put on a chartered plane to the UK. That flight took off at 5:05 p.m. British passengers were expected to quarantine for 45 days at a specialist hospital in the Wirral.
U.S. citizens were the last to leave that night. Both Americans were placed in biocontainment units on their charter plane "out of an abundance of caution" and were to undergo clinical testing upon landing. One of those Americans had tested mildly positive in Cape Verde before the evacuation, but European authorities did not consider that result strong enough to separate him from the wider group.
The CDC activated an emergency response as multiple U.S. states began monitoring returning passengers.
Officials evacuated 94 stranded passengers across 19 nationalities in the first day of a two-day operation. The evacuation was due to end the following day with a flight to Australia, also carrying a New Zealander and Asian passengers.
Within hours, the assurances fell apart. The French woman, one of five French passengers evacuated together, developed symptoms on the plane to Paris. Her condition deteriorated as the aircraft landed. French Health Minister Stephanie Rist told France Inter radio that the woman had tested positive and was placed in strict isolation. Rist also said French authorities had traced 22 contact cases in recent days: eight people on an April 25 flight between Saint Helena and Johannesburg, and 14 on a flight between Johannesburg and Amsterdam.
The U.S. citizen tested positive Sunday night while flying back to the States. The two new cases were confirmed on May 11.
The WHO confirmed on Wednesday that the outbreak aboard the MV Hondius involved the Andes hantavirus, a strain the organization believes could carry a mortality rate of up to 40 percent. The WHO estimates between 10,000 and 100,000 hantavirus cases occur in humans worldwide every year. Three Britons have been confirmed or suspected to have the virus, including crew member Mark Anstee, who was airlifted from the ship for treatment in the Netherlands.
WHO Director General Dr. Tedros sought to calm public anxiety.
"This is not another Covid."
He added that no one should worry about the evacuation and that the risk was "low." South African officials separately confirmed the Andes strain had caused infections in two of the cruise passengers.
The decision not to test passengers aboard the ship before scattering them across commercial and charter flights to a dozen countries now stands as the central failure of this response. Officials said they wanted to avoid false positives. But the alternative, sending potentially infected people onto planes with other travelers, relying on home-country testing that would come days later, carried its own obvious risks. The French case proved those risks were real: a woman developed symptoms in a sealed aircraft cabin, surrounded by fellow passengers who are now contact cases.
The U.S. citizen's situation raises its own concerns. He had already tested mildly positive in Cape Verde. European authorities decided that result was not strong enough to warrant separating him. He was placed in a biocontainment unit on his charter flight, a precaution that suggests someone recognized the risk, yet was still allowed to leave with the general evacuation group rather than being isolated earlier.
The quarantine measures awaiting passengers in their home countries may yet contain further spread. But containment after dispersal is a far harder task than containment at the point of departure, a lesson public health officials supposedly learned during the early months of Covid.
Several questions remain unanswered. What authority confirmed the U.S. citizen's positive result? Which agency placed the Americans in biocontainment units? What is the current condition of the French woman in strict isolation? And how many of the 94 evacuated passengers, spread across 19 nationalities, are now showing symptoms that have not yet been publicly disclosed?
The central Spanish government overruled local Canary Islands officials who wanted to block the ship. WHO and Spanish officials told the public every passenger was asymptomatic. The evacuation proceeded without onboard hantavirus testing. Within hours, two evacuees tested positive, one mid-flight, surrounded by other travelers.
Dr. Tedros says this is not another Covid. He is right about one thing: the Andes hantavirus strain may carry a fatality rate far higher than Covid ever did. That makes the casual screening and rapid dispersal of potentially infected passengers not reassuring, but reckless.
When the people in charge tell you the risk is "low" and then two positive cases appear on planes full of passengers before the day is out, the problem is not the virus. The problem is the people making the decisions.
