The hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship that had visited some remote islands is nearly over, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), as the last Americans who were on the ship and still in quarantine left for their homes.
“We’re closing in on ending this outbreak,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said in a statement on June 23.
He noted that the captain of the MV Hondius, the Dutch-flagged vessel on which the outbreak spread, and most of the ship’s crew have completed their quarantine, as have more than 80 percent of contacts who were exposed to cases.
The number of cases has held steady at 13, Ghebreyesus said. That includes three people who died.
Hantaviruses are a family of viruses that usually spread to people through contact with droppings, urine, or saliva from infected rodents, such as rats. Symptoms can include fatigue, fever, nausea, and shortness of breath. People infected with hantavirus can sometimes experience severe kidney injury, and cases sometimes end in death.
Sequencing from the outbreak on the MV Hondius was highly similar to sequences previously identified in Argentina, from which the ship departed to remote areas such as Antarctica, researchers said in May in a research letter published by the New England Journal of Medicine.
“An initial zoonotic introduction before the departure of the ship from Argentina on April 1 is likely, because symptoms developed in Patient 1 on April 3, and he had a 3-month travel history to regions with known enzootic circulation” of Andes virus, the hantavirus identified on the ship, they wrote.
Some Americans who were on board the ship were flown to a facility in Nebraska to quarantine as officials monitored them for symptoms.
“I’m finally coming home,” Jake Rosmarin, one of the passengers, wrote on Facebook on Monday, thanking the people of Omaha for treating him well.
Rosmarin later posted videos of him hugging family members, enjoying sushi for his first post-quarantine meal at a restaurant in New York, and relishing in “the little things,” such as feeling raindrops.
Federal officials had mandated the quarantine of two people, while the others had remained at the facility voluntarily.
“Quarantine is a public health measure, available at the federal, state, and county level, and used as necessary to protect communities,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement in May.
