Company says it’s not clear when its hantavirus-hit ship will start cruises again

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The operator of the cruise ship at the centre of a hantavirus outbreak told The Associated Press on Wednesday it expects to know by the end of the week if the vessel will keep to its schedule for the coming months, as it previously indicated it would.

The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius is listed on Oceanwide Expeditions’ website as scheduled to depart on a cruise later in May that would take it to the Arctic. Three of the ship’s passengers died in an outbreak that was first confirmed earlier this month while the vessel was in the Atlantic.

In all, there have been nine confirmed and two suspected cases in the outbreak.

More than 120 people -- all passengers and some of the crew -- were evacuated from the Hondius in Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday and Monday and are in isolation in several countries.

Asked on Monday whether it would amend its cruising schedule due to the outbreak, Oceanwide Expeditions said it did not “foresee changes to our operations” -- which included a new cruise beginning May 29 from Keflavik, Iceland.

But on Wednesday, the company told AP it expected “clarity on whether the vessel will sail and the sailing schedule by the end of this week.”

Separately, over 1,700 passengers and crew aboard a British cruise ship on Wednesday were ordered to remain on board following an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness, French authorities said.

They ruled out any link to the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 16 gastrointestinal outbreaks on cruise ships in 2024, with most caused by norovirus, a foodborne illness that can cause vomiting, diarrhea, nausea and stomach pain for about one to three days.

Much is still unknown about the hantavirus

Despite years of research, many questions have yet to be answered about the hantavirus, including exactly how it spreads, how long it can survive outside a host and why it can be mild for some people and severe for others.

There is no specific treatment or cure, but early medical attention can increase the chance of survival. The Andes virus implicated in the cruise ship outbreak can have an incubation period of up to eight weeks and a mortality rate of up to 50%, according to the World Health Organization.

The virus usually spreads from rodent droppings and is not easily transmitted between people, though the Andes virus may be able to spread between people in rare cases.

The genome of the hantavirus has been completely sequenced, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said Wednesday.

“There is no data to suggest that this virus is behaving differently in terms of transmissibility or severity from any of the known virus circulating in certain regions of the world,” said Andreas Hoefer, who oversees the operational coordination of the European Union’s reference laboratories for public health.

“Based on that data, I would say that currently we have no reason to suspect that this is a new virus,” Hoefer said.

Cruise ship to be disinfected in Rotterdam

The hantavirus outbreak aboard the Hondius is the first known case on a cruise ship.

The ship is now sailing to the Dutch port of Rotterdam with 25 crew, two health workers and the body of one of the passengers who died on board. None is showing symptoms, and the vessel is expected to arrive on May 17 or 18, Oceanwide Expeditions said in a statement Tuesday.

Once there, the Hondius will “undergo a thorough cleaning and disinfection process,” the company said. “The specific protocols are currently being finalized” in cooperation with health authorities.

The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment told the AP on Tuesday the vessel “will be cleaned and disinfected. We are currently working on the protocol on how to do this,” and no further details could be shared.

Responding to a question about whether the disinfection procedure might alter the ship’s cruising schedule, Oceanwide Expeditions told the AP it was following official guidelines and “currently awaiting further information on how to proceed.”

It added: “We expect clarity on whether the vessel will sail and the sailing schedule by the end of this week. ... A ship cannot sail without official authorization.”

Asked whether it had received any cancellation or rebooking requests for cruises on the Hondius, Oceanwide Expeditions said Monday it was “not providing commentary on commercial matters at this time as we are focused on safety, disembarkation procedures and coordination with authorities.”

Experts say future passengers are likely safe

How long the hantavirus lives on surfaces is highly variable, experts said, potentially from days to weeks depending on how cold it is or the presence of sunlight. But based on circumstances known about the outbreak, basic sanitation should suffice, they said.

Normal disinfectants and ultraviolet light are enough to kill the virus, said Erik Hill, a virus expert at Seton Hall University. Someone would need to be exposed to a large enough dose of the virus to get sick, he explained, which is why people cleaning rodent droppings in an enclosed space are most at risk. The virus won’t survive very well on touch surfaces, he added.

Hantavirus “is not the concern on cruise ships,” Hill said. He and other experts say more contagious bugs, like measles or the norovirus, are much larger threats on cruises.

Dr. Max Brito, vice-president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said that “with proper disinfection and sterilization practices, I think it should be OK to go back to operations within a reasonable time.”

But the experts could not say definitively what that time frame would be because of the variables involved.

Oceanwide Expeditions says it has no indication of any rodents on board, and it operates under strict hygiene and safety protocols.

Based on the hypothesis that the first patients were exposed on land and reports that ship officials did not find rodents on board, the risk to those on the next cruise should be low, Brito said.

“I don’t want to say that it’s a one-off but, as it’s shaping up to be, it’s a very specific outbreak and it’s probably not so easy to reproduce in the same way,” he said.

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Elena Becatoros and Devi Shastri, The Associated Press

Becatoros reported from Athens, Greece, and public health reporter Shastri reported from Milwaukee. AP writers Thomas Adamson in Paris and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.