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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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Six passengers had boarded a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship days after the first passenger died on board, according to the ship's operator.
Oceanwide Expeditions said on Thursday that six guests had boarded the ship at Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory in the south Atlantic, on April 15, a detail that had not previously been released.
That was several days after the first passenger died on the ship, but the World Health Organization (WHO) has said it wasn't until May 2 that health authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a ship passenger.
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Passenger Numbers Clarified
Oceanwide Expeditions had said on Thursday that 114 passengers were on the ship when it set sail from Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1—and that 30 guests disembarked on the South Atlantic Island of St. Helena on April 24, including the Dutch man who had died on the ship.
Later on Thursday, the company clarified that there had been 120 passengers onboard the ship when it arrived at St. Helena. The company said the six additional guests who boarded the ship at Tristan da Cunha included four British nationals who were included on the ship’s original manifest and two “unplanned additions” who are believed to be from Chile.
Newsweek has contacted Oceanwide Expeditions for further comment via email.
Three people—a Dutch couple and a German woman—have died and several others have fallen ill in the outbreak on the MV Hondius, which set sail from Argentina a month ago. The ship, which is carrying more than 140 passengers and crew members, is heading for Spain’s Canary Islands, where health officials said they will perform careful evacuations.
Oceanwide Expeditions said the ship is expected to reach the island of Tenerife on Sunday.
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No Wider Infection Yet
None of the remaining passengers or crew on the ship is currently symptomatic, the company said on Thursday.
The WHO considers the risk to the wider public from the outbreak as low. On Friday, it confirmed that a KLM flight attendant on a plane briefly boarded by an infected cruise passenger had tested negative for hantavirus. The attendant’s possible infection had raised concerns about the virus’s potential transmissibility.
Hantavirus is usually spread by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and isn’t easily transmitted between people, but the Andes virus implicated in the cruise ship outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
Countries Scramble to Monitor Passengers
More than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries disembarked the ship on St. Helena without contact tracing on April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board, Oceanwide Expeditions and Dutch officials have said.
The passengers include seven from the United Kingdom, six from the United States, three from the Netherlands and two each from Canada, Switzerland, and Turkey. Other passengers who disembarked from the ship on April 24 hail from Germany, Denmark, St. Kitts and Nevis, New Zealand, Singapore and Sweden.
In the U.S., four states—Arizona, California, Georgia and Virginia—are monitoring people who have returned home after being on the ship. Health officials in those states told Newsweek on Thursday that none of the people have shown signs of illness so far.
The KLM flight attendant who tested negative for the virus was working on a flight headed from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on April 25, and had later fallen ill. She was taken to an isolation ward at an Amsterdam hospital on Thursday.
The cruise passenger who was briefly aboard that flight—a Dutch woman whose husband died on the ship—was too ill to stay on the international flight to Europe and was taken off the plane in Johannesburg, where she died. A German woman who showed symptoms of hantavirus died aboard the ship on April 28.
On Friday, U.K. health authorities said a third British national is suspected to have the hantavirus. The U.K. Health Security Agency said the suspected case is on Tristan da Cunha. There was no word on the person’s condition.
Two other Britons who were on the ship have been confirmed to have the virus. One is hospitalized in the Netherlands and the other in South Africa.
What Is Hantavirus?
Hantaviruses are a related family of viruses present worldwide, many capable of causing illness in humans. They are generally classified into two groups: "Old World" strains found in Africa, Asia and Europe, and "New World" strains in the Americas.
Although related, these groups are linked to distinct diseases—New World hantaviruses are responsible for hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome (HCPS), while Old World variants cause hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS).
The Andes virus is the only hantavirus in which infection through human-to-human contact has been documented.
Low Transmissibility
"As widely covered, the person-to-person transmissibility of this virus is very low," Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading in the U.K. told Newsweek on Thursday.
"The main risk is from the original source, rodent droppings and urine, which can become airborne if they are disturbed, for example, by cleaning."
"Contacts who are very close to the original infected individual, usually family members or nursing staff, can become infected but it does not happen easily and it is not likely that general members of the cruise have been infected," he said.
Jones added: "Once the incubation period has passed the outbreak will be over and until that time the risk to the general public is effectively nil."
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