Reacción a "Three people die in connection with a possible hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship that departed from Argentina"

Hantaviruses are a type of virus that are carried by wild rodents like mice or rats and have been recognised since the 1980s.  They are transmitted to humans through breathing in virus in aerosol that has been shed from rodent droppings, but they do not transmit well and so most outbreaks happen among people who have a very high amount of exposure to droppings like farm workers in parts of the world where farmland overlaps with wild habitat for many rodents.

Hantaviruses can be found in wild rodents over many parts of the globe including North and South America, Asia, and Europe which includes wildlife of the United Kingdom although human infection with these viruses is exceptionally rare.

In terms of disease, there are two main types of hantavirus – one can cause disease in the kidneys with intensive fever (“Haemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome” or “HFRS”), the other can cause disease in the lungs (“Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome” or “HPS”).  While these are life threatening, most hantavirus infections do not progress to this stage of disease and they are more likely to do so in people with underlying health conditions.  Certain specific hantaviruses are also milder than others, though it is currently hard to speculate as we don’t yet know which of these diseases or which specific hantaviruses affected the people on the MV Hondius.  So far only one case has so far been confirmed positive for hantavirus at all.

Importantly, hantaviruses are not transmissible from person to person except in extremely rare circumstances and only for one specific type of hantavirus called Andes virus, under very intensive close contact (e.g., between sexual partners or from hospital patient to hospital staff).  It’s therefore extremely likely that these cases have resulted from the same single point of exposure to rodents.  The long incubation period means that it will be challenging to pinpoint exactly when and where this occurred.