38 Filipinos among crew of hantavirus-hit ship
The Department of Health (DOH) on Tuesday said it was in close coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) following reports that a cruise ship hit by a suspected hantavirus outbreak had 38 Filipinos among its crew members.
“The good news, according to the WHO, under the international health regulations, they have no illnesses. We have not heard or received any reports so far. We are in close coordination,” DOH spokesperson Albert Domingo said in an interview on state TV.
Domingo ruled out any immediate danger reaching the country, saying the crew of the MV Hondius had been quarantined in the vessel which remained anchored as of Tuesday off Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean.
“We are monitoring the situation and, according to our coordination with [other] government agencies, the responsibility of repatriation now falls on the operator,” Domingo said at the “Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon” program. “They are a cruise ship, there is a company; let us monitor how they will get home.”
In a statement on Monday, the WHO said it had confirmed two cases of the hantavirus and was looking at five suspected cases onboard the MV Hondius.
Three passengers had died while another was critically ill and being treated at a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The cruise operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, issued a statement saying the ship had a total of 88 passengers and 61 crew members, including 38 Filipinos.
The vessel remained anchored off the coast of Cape Verde, an archipelago in the central Atlantic Ocean, where local health authorities had boarded the ship and assessed the situation.
Oceanwide said the passengers would not be disembarking in Cape Verde, except for three individuals who had to be medically evacuated. The company said it was considering sending the ship to Las Palmas or Tenerife in Spain for further medical screening and handling, but that no final disembarkation point for those onboard had been decided.
According to Domingo, hantavirus infection in humans remains rare and can be caused by contact with the urine or feces of rats carrying the virus. Its symptoms include flu-like illnesses and body pain, similar to leptospirosis and dengue. (See In the Know on this page.)
The Philippine has not recorded any recent hantavirus case, and the DOH is checking whether cases reported in 1992 were accurately documented as such, he added.
Human-to-human
The WHO said on Tuesday it suspected that hantavirus may have spread between people on the cruise ship, with three dead among seven confirmed and suspected cases.
“We do believe that there may be some human-to-human transmission that is happening among the really close contacts,” the WHO’s epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director Maria Van Kerkhove told reporters.
She added that there was a suspicion the person first sickened was infected before boarding the MV Hondius.
The WHO said it was trying to contact passengers on an April 25 flight between St. Helena and Johannesburg, taken by one of the sickened cruise ship passengers, who died the next day.
“As of 4 May 2026, seven cases (two laboratory confirmed cases of hantavirus and five suspected cases) have been identified, including three deaths, one critically ill patient and three individuals reporting mild symptoms,” the United Nations health agency said in a statement.
During the cruise, which was traveling from Ushuaia in Argentina to Cape Verde off west Africa, “illness onset occurred between 6 and 28 April 2026,” the WHO said.
It was “characterized by fever, gastrointestinal symptoms, rapid progression to pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome and shock,” it said, adding that “further investigations are ongoing.”
‘Low’ risk
The WHO stressed that it assessed the risk to the global population from outbreak as “low,” adding that it would continue to monitor the situation.
Passengers from Britain, Spain and the United States, as well as crew from the Philippines, were among 23 nationalities aboard the MV Hondius, which the WHO said was currently carrying 147 people.
A British passenger was in intensive care in Johannesburg and two crew—one British and the other Dutch—required “urgent medical care,” the ship’s operator Oceanwide Expeditions said in a statement.
Three of the identified cases were no longer on the ship and four remained on board, including a German who died on Saturday.
The first deaths among the passengers were a Dutch couple—a husband who died on board on April 11 and his wife who died after she disembarked the boat in St. Helena to accompany his body, the operator said.
‘Gastro’ symptoms’
The WHO said that the wife who left the ship with her dead husband on April 24 had been suffering from “gastrointestinal symptoms.”
“She subsequently deteriorated during a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, on 25 April,” it said, adding that “she later died upon arrival at the emergency department on 26 April.”
“On 4 May, the case was subsequently confirmed by PCR with hantavirus infection,” it said, stressing that “contact tracing for passengers on the flight has been initiated.” —WITH A REPORT FROM AFP
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