Hantavirus crops up on a cruise ship — what scientists are watching

A person who was aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius has tested positive for a variant of hantavirus and is now in an intensive-care unit in South Africa. Credit: Elton Monteiro/EPA/Shutterstock Infectious-disease researchers are eager to learn more about a suspected outbreak of hantavirus, on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Three people have died while on board the MV Hondius and a fourth passenger has been evacuated to a hospital in South Africa. The World Health Organization says laboratory testing has confirmed that this person has a variant of hantavirus, a family of viruses that are carried by rodents but can also infect people. In addition, two crew members have respiratory symptoms but have not been confirmed to have the infection, according to the ship’s operator, the Dutch company Oceanwide Expeditions. The cause of death for the other three passengers is not yet known, the company said in a statement. The MV Hondius is currently located off the coast of Cabo Verde. Vaithi Arumugaswami, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, says that hantaviruses do not pose a pandemic risk, but the incident is a warning that the viruses should be monitored and that more research is needed to develop vaccines and treatments for them. What are hantaviruses? There are two main groups of hantaviruses. The Old World hantavirus is found in Africa, Asia and Europe and causes haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). …