Bordeaux: French authorities on Wednesday confined more than 1,700 passengers and crew on a British cruise ship docked in Bordeaux after an elderly passenger died, said officials, who played down any links to the <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/argentinas-deadly-hantavirus-memories-resurface-after-cruise-ship-outbreak" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">hantavirus scare</a>.&nbsp;Dozens also suffered from upset stomachs aboard the Ambition &ndash; most of whose 1,233 passengers are from Britain or Ireland &ndash; which arrived in the western port of Bordeaux on Tuesday, with 514 Indian crew members also on board. But health officials said there was no connection with the hantavirus outbreak, suspected of killing three passengers on the Dutch MV Hondius <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/hantavirushit-cruise-ship-arrives-in-spains-canary-islands" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">cruise ship</a> that set sail from Argentina. One 90-year-old passenger on the Ambition, run by the Ambassador Cruise Line company, had died and about 50 people have shown symptoms of stomach issues, the officials said. Initial tests ruled out an outbreak of norovirus, a highly contagious form of gastroenteritis which causes vomiting and diarrhea, but secondary tests were still underway, they added. Food poisoning had not been excluded. Passengers on board the Ambition showed peak symptoms on Monday when the ship was docked in Brest, the officials said. The 90-year-old died before they arrived at the port in France&#39;s northwestern Brittany region. The ship, which left the Shetland Islands north of Scotland on May 6, stopped in Belfast in Northern Ireland and Liverpool in England before reaching Bordeaux, from where it was scheduled to depart for Spain. No security measures were in place around the ship as it was docked in Bordeaux on Wednesday, an AFP reporter said. Passengers were taking pictures of the French city from the deck.

Norovirus particles, illustration. Norovirus is the most common cause of viral gastroenteritis. (AFP)

Europe

French authorities investigate gastrointestinal illness on a British cruise ship docked in Bordeaux, with health officials testing possible causes among passengers and crew.

France locks down 1,700 on cruise ship after 90-year-old dies

GENEVA: The World Health Organization (WHO) said Saturday it considered everyone on board a cruise ship hit with a deadly hantavirus outbreak as &quot;high-risk&quot; contacts who should be actively monitored for 42 days. There are nearly 150 people on board the MV Hondius at the centre of the outbreak that has killed three people, which is heading towards the waters off Tenerife. &quot;We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact,&quot; WHO&#39;s epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director Maria Van Kerkhove told a social media event. Currently, &quot;there&#39;s nobody on board that has any symptoms&quot;, she said, adding though that &quot;active monitoring and follow-up of all the passengers and crew who disembark for a 42-day period&quot; was recommended. Van Kerkove stressed that the risk to the general public and to the people of the Canary Islands, where the Hondius is expected to anchor on Sunday, remained &quot;low&quot;. Three passengers from the ship &ndash; a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman &ndash; have died, out of eight confirmed and suspected cases of the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents. The only hantavirus type that can transmit from person to person &ndash; the Andes virus &ndash; has been confirmed among the six cases who have tested positive, fueling international concern. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is heading to Tenerife to help coordinate the evacuation. Van Kerkhove said the United Nations health agency was coordinating with member states &ndash; in particular Spain and the Netherlands, the ship&#39;s operator, and experts around the world on the best way forward. On Saturday, WHO had briefed countries with nationals on board the ship about the plans for &quot;safe and dignified disembarkment&quot;, she said. The idea, she said, was for anyone who might be showing symptoms to &quot;immediately go to a medical evacuation plane and be taken to the Netherlands for care&quot;. Countries were organizing planes to take all those without symptoms back home, with some countries, like the United States and Canada, discussing sharing a plane, Van Kerkhove said. Everyone coming off the ship would meanwhile need to be monitored for 42 days, starting from their last point of exposure with a confirmed or suspected hantavirus case, she said. That means, she said, &quot;the clock has already started ticking&quot;.

Members of the Spanish Civil Guard wait for the arrival of the Cruise MV Hondius at port of Granadilla de Abona on the island of Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands on May 9, 2026. (AFP)

WHO advises monitoring all passengers after a deadly cruise ship outbreak, ordering 42-day surveillance and follow-up after disembarkation, while saying public risk to the Canary Islands remains low.

Everyone on hantavirus-hit ship 'high-risk contact', must be monitored: WHO

GENEVA: Countries prepared Friday to repatriate passengers stranded aboard the MV Hondius after a deadly hantavirus outbreak killed three people and sickened several others during the trans-Atlantic cruise. The Dutch-flagged vessel, carrying around 150 people, is expected to arrive off Tenerife in Spain&rsquo;s Canary Islands on Sunday. Special flights will then take passengers to their home countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) said the outbreak posed a minimal risk to the general public despite confirmation of the Andes virus strain, the only hantavirus known to spread from person to person. Three passengers &mdash; a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman &mdash; have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents. &ldquo;This is a dangerous virus, but only to the person who&#39;s really infected, and the risk to the general population remains absolutely low,&rdquo; WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters. &ldquo;The virus is not that contagious that it easily jumps from person to person,&rdquo; he added. The WHO said Friday there were five confirmed and three suspected cases of the virus, with an update due later. There are no suspected cases remaining on the ship. A KLM flight attendant who came into contact with an infected passenger and later showed mild symptoms tested negative for hantavirus, the WHO said. The infected passenger &mdash; the wife of the first person to die in the outbreak &mdash; had briefly boarded a Johannesburg-to-Netherlands flight on April 25 before being removed prior to takeoff. She died the following day in a Johannesburg hospital. Spanish authorities said a woman seated two rows behind the infected passenger on that flight was also being tested for hantavirus after developing symptoms in eastern Spain. She is in isolation in hospital. The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde. Three suspected cases, including two crew members who later tested positive, were evacuated from Cape Verde to the Netherlands. German authorities said Friday the third person tested negative but would remain under observation. Two Dutch healthcare workers &mdash; an expert from the European Centres for Disease Control and a WHO representative &mdash; are now aboard the ship conducting a risk assessment. Spanish authorities said the ship will anchor off Tenerife and will not be allowed to dock. Passengers will be transferred to shore on a smaller vessel before being taken by bus to the airport. The evacuation must take place between Sunday and Monday due to likely adverse weather conditions afterward, the Canarian regional government said. Dockworkers in Tenerife protested Friday against the ship&rsquo;s arrival. British health authorities also said Friday there was a suspected case on Tristan da Cunha, one of the world&rsquo;s most isolated settlements with around 220 people.

A bank vole (Myodes glareolus), also known as the forest vole, is a small rodent that can transmit hantavirus, which is dangerous to humans. (AFP)

Countries are preparing to repatriate passengers from the MV Hondius after a deadly hantavirus outbreak killed three people and infected several others during the cruise across the Atlantic Ocean.

Passengers to be repatriated after deadly hantavirus outbreak on cruise ship

GENEVA: The World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday it was tracing people on a flight between the island of Saint Helena and Johannesburg, taken by a cruise ship passenger who died of hantavirus. A total of 82 passengers and six crew were on board the April 25 flight from the British island in the Atlantic Ocean, South African-based carrier Airlink told AFP. They included a Dutch woman whose husband died of the virus on the ship and whose condition &quot;deteriorated during a flight to Johannesburg&quot;, WHO said in a statement. She had left the ship in Saint Helena with &quot;gastrointestinal symptoms&quot; on April 24, flew the next day and died upon arrival at the emergency department of a Johannesburg hospital on April 26, the WHO said. On May 4, tests for hantavirus proved positive. &quot;Contact tracing for passengers on the flight has been initiated,&quot; the WHO said. Airlink operates one flight a week from the island, which takes around four hours and 45 minutes. The South African authorities had asked the airline to notify the passengers that they must contact the health department, a representative, Karin Murray, told AFP. WHO said it suspected that hantavirus may have spread between people on the cruise ship, which on Tuesday was anchored just off Cape Verde. Besides the Dutch couple, a German passenger has also died. There are two confirmed and five suspected cases. Saint Helena, home to around 4,400 close-knit people, said passengers from the MV Hondius had come ashore and some people on the remote South Atlantic island were being asked to isolate themselves. &quot;Two passengers with minor symptoms came ashore and may have had some contact with members of our local community,&quot; the British overseas territory&#39;s government said in a statement. &quot;While the virus can be serious, no cases of this illness have been identified in St Helena and there is no significant cause for concern on the island at this time. &quot;A small number of people who travelled to St Helena on the MV Hondius or had very close contact with those who were showing symptoms, are being advised by Public Health to undertake a period of self-isolation as a precaution.&quot; The government said a full risk-based contact tracing process was under way to identify and notify such persons.

An ambulance boat carrying crew members wearing hazmat suits, returns to the port of Praia, the capital of Cape Verde, on May 5, 2026 after a visit to the cruise ship MV Hondius, while stationary off the harbor. (AFP)

Africa

WHO traces contacts on a flight from Saint Helena to Johannesburg after a cruise ship passenger later tested positive for hantavirus and died, prompting contact tracing for all 82 passengers and six crew members.

WHO tracing over 80 people on flight taken by hantavirus victim

PRAIA: Passengers aboard a cruise ship on which a suspected <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/three-die-on-atlantic-cruise-ship-from-suspected-hantavirus-who" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">outbreak of hantavirus</a> has killed three people will not be allowed to disembark in Cape Verde where it is anchored, authorities said, expressing concern for the local population. The refusal came even as WHO Europe said the risk to the wider public remained low. In its first statement on the crisis, the vessel&#39;s operator Oceanwide Expeditions confirmed three deaths on board the MV Hondius, travelling across from Ushuaia in Argentina to Cape Verde off the coast of west Africa. Two died on board and one after disembarking the ship. One passenger is in intensive care in Johannesburg and two others &quot;require urgent medical care&quot;, the statement said. The president of Cape Verde&#39;s National Institute of Public Health (INSP) said that the ship &quot;was not granted authorization to dock at the port of Praia&quot; off which it is anchored, in an interview with RTC public broadcaster late Sunday. &quot;Here in the country, passengers will not be able to disembark &ndash; precisely to protect the Cape Verdean population,&quot; Maria da Luz Lima declared, adding that &quot;there would be no contact between the passengers and the country&quot;. Dutch authorities have agreed to lead a joint effort to organize the repatriation of two symptomatic individuals on board MV Hondius to the Netherlands, the Oceanwide Expeditions operator said. Such a repatriation would depend on several factors, including authorization from local officials in Cape Verde, it added. In a statement sent to AFP, the Dutch foreign ministry said it was &quot;busy looking at the possibilities to medically evacuate a few people from the ship&quot;. &quot;If this can take place, the ministry of foreign affairs will coordinate it,&quot; said a spokesperson. &#39;Acting with urgency&#39; While local doctors have visited to assess the medical condition of the two sick crew, no permission was given to evacuate them to shore. Despite the concern, &quot;risk to the wider public remains low&quot;, the World Health Organization&#39;s director for Europe Hans Kluge said in a statement, adding that &quot;there is no need for panic or travel restrictions&quot;. He added that hantavirus infections were &quot;uncommon and usually linked to exposure to <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/rats-fleas-plague-gazas-displaced-as-temperatures-rise" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">infected rodents</a>&quot;. The WHO said it was &quot;acting with urgency to support the response to the hantavirus event on board a cruise vessel in the Atlantic, following the tragic loss of life&quot;. &quot;WHO Europe is working with the countries involved to support medical care, evacuation, investigations and public health risk assessment.&quot; Hantavirus, an illness usually transmitted to humans from rodents, has been confirmed in the passenger currently in intensive care in Johannesburg, the operator said. However, it has not yet been established whether the virus caused the three deaths, said Oceanwide Expeditions. There has also been no confirmation of hantavirus in the two symptomatic people still requiring attention on the ship. &quot;The exact cause and any possible connection are under investigation,&quot; said the ship&#39;s operator. On Sunday, the WHO said one case of hantavirus had been confirmed and that there were &quot;five additional suspected cases.&quot; &quot;While rare, hantavirus may spread between people, and can lead to severe respiratory illness and requires careful patient monitoring, support and response,&quot; the United Nations health agency said.

This aerial picture shows a general view of the cruise ship MV Hondius stationary off the port of Praia, the capital of Cape Verde, on May 3, 2026. An outbreak of "severe acute respiratory illness" on board a cruise ship in the Atlantic has left two peopl

Cape Verde refuses to allow cruise passengers to disembark from MV Hondius over suspected hantavirus outbreak after three deaths, while health authorities continue investigating the cause.

Articles tagged with "cruise ship"

France locks down 1,700 on cruise ship after 90-year-old dies

Everyone on hantavirus-hit ship 'high-risk contact', must be monitored: WHO

Passengers to be repatriated after deadly hantavirus outbreak on cruise ship

WHO tracing over 80 people on flight taken by hantavirus victim

Cape Verde bans passengers from cruise with suspected virus deaths