Preparing for freezing-cold weather and equatorial temperatures should have been the biggest challenge for 175 passengers and crew aboard a cruise ship that left Argentina's Tierra del Fuego on April 1 to travel through sub-Antarctic waters, taking passengers to birdwatch in the remote South Georgia and Tristan da Cunha islands on their way to the Canaries. Instead, one Dutch passenger became ill about a week into the voyage and died on April 11. His wife left the ship on April 24 at the island of Saint Helena off the coast of Angola, as did 30 others; she flew to South Africa and died in a hospital there on April 26. It wasn’t until May 2, after the death of a third victim, a German woman, that South African authorities identified Andes hantavirus as the viral agent responsible.
On board the MV Hondius were people from 23 different nations who have now been either quarantined by their governments or asked to quarantine at home. In the case of 15 U.S. passengers from the ship, they are at the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska, which was last used to house COVID patients from the Diamond Princess cruise ship at the beginning of that outbreak in 2020 .
Doctors are being asked if there are parallels in the two infectious virus outbreaks.