The World Health Organisation said Friday that the risk to the public of a deadly hantavirus strain in a cruise ship outbreak was minimal, as it spreads only through “very close contact”.

“This is a dangerous virus, but only to the person who’s really infected, and the risk to the general population remains absolutely low,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a press briefing in Geneva.

He pointed out that even people who had stayed in the same cabins on the stricken MV Hondius cruise ship “don’t seem to be both infected in some cases”.

The Health body had said on Thursday that more hantavirus cases could emerge after the disease killed three passengers from a cruise ship, but it expected the outbreak to be limited if precautions were taken.

Another sick passenger from the MV Hondius landed in Europe earlier in the day, as the vessel headed to the Spanish Canary Islands, and health officials scrambled to trace the outbreak of the potentially deadly human‑to‑human strain.

The fate of the Hondius sparked international alarm after three people travelling on it died, though health officials have played down fears of a wider global outbreak from the rat‑borne virus, which is less contagious than Covid‑19.


US President Donald Trump said Thursday he had been briefed on the situation. “It’s very much, we hope, under control,” Trump told reporters.

“It was the ship — and I think we’re going to make a full report about it tomorrow. We have a lot of great people studying it… It should be fine, we hope.”

A Dutch couple who had travelled around South America before boarding the ship in Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1 were the first fatalities.

Argentine health authorities said Thursday they had not yet been able to establish where the outbreak began.

“With the information provided so far by the countries involved and participating national agencies, it is not possible to confirm the origin of the infection,” the health ministry said after a meeting with authorities from all 24 Argentine provinces.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists in Geneva that five confirmed and three suspected cases had been reported overall, including the three deaths.

“Given the incubation period of the Andes virus, which can be up to six weeks, it’s possible that more cases may be reported,” he said, referring to the rare strain detected aboard the Hondius, which can be transmitted between humans.

The Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands later announced another patient had tested positive.


But the WHO’s emergency alert and response director, Abdi Rahman Mahamud, said he believed it would be “a limited outbreak” if “public health measures are implemented and solidarity shown across all countries.”

People thought or known to have contracted the virus are being treated or isolating in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and South Africa.

Hantavirus is a rare respiratory disease that is usually spread from infected rodents and can cause respiratory and cardiac distress as well as haemorrhagic fevers. There are no vaccines and no known cure.

A passenger is thought to have contracted the virus before boarding the ship in Argentina and infected others on board as it sailed across the Atlantic.

Officials in Argentina said they planned to test rodents in the coastal city of Ushuaia, from where the ship had set sail on April 1.

Three evacuees were whisked away from the ship on Wednesday when it anchored off Cape Verde and a fourth landed in Amsterdam on Thursday, according to the vessel’s operator, Netherlands-based Oceanwide Expeditions.

The company said there were no symptomatic individuals on board as the ship sails toward the Spanish island of Tenerife, where it is scheduled to arrive on Sunday.

YouTuber Kasem Ibn Hattuta, a passenger aboard the Hondius, posted a video recounting how he learned of the first death around 12 days after the start of the trip.

“Most people on board are reacting very calmly to the situation, unlike what is being reported in the media,” Hattuta said.

“Today was supposed to be the last day of our 35-day voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. But it is clear that our journey will not end here,” he added, referring to Cape Verde’s refusal to allow the Hondius to dock.


A Dutch man who had boarded in Ushuaia along with his wife died aboard the ship on April 11.

The man’s body was taken off the ship on April 24 in Saint Helena, an island in the south Atlantic where 29 other passengers disembarked, the ship’s operator said.

It said it was working to trace all passengers and crew who got on or off the ship since March 20.

Tedros said the WHO had informed 12 countries that their nationals disembarked from the cruise ship on Saint Helena.

The Saint Helena government said “more than 95 percent” of the population had no close contact with the ship’s passengers or crew, or boarded the vessel, and are currently “at an extremely low risk of infection”.

The deceased man’s wife, who left the ship to accompany his body to South Africa, died in that country 15 days later after also falling ill, with hantavirus confirmed as the cause on May 4.

The couple had visited Chile and Uruguay as well as Argentina, officials in Buenos Aires said.

Chile’s health ministry said the couple were not infected in that country as they travelled there at “a period that does not correspond to the incubation time”.

According to the WHO, the incubation period for hantavirus can be up to six weeks.

The Dutch woman flew on a commercial plane from Saint Helena to Johannesburg while she was showing symptoms.

Officials were trying to trace people on that flight, which South African-based carrier Airlink said was carrying 82 passengers and six crew.

A German passenger died on May 2. Her body remains on the sh

Iran denied on Thursday attacking a South Korean cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz this week, as US President Donald Trump said a deal to end the war was “very possible” but warned Washington would resume bombing if talks failed.

Tehran’s embassy in Seoul said it “firmly rejects and categorically denies” allegations that its armed forces were behind a blast aboard the Panama-flagged HMM Namu, which caught fire on Monday while transiting the strategic waterway with 24 crew members on board.

Trump later claimed Iran had “taken some shots” at the vessel and urged South Korea to join US-led efforts to restore shipping through the strait.

The war, launched by the United States and Israel in late February, saw Iran respond with attacks across the Middle East and impose a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, rattling global energy markets.

Despite Trump’s optimism, Iran has yet to respond to a new US proposal, with its chief negotiator warning that Washington was seeking to force the Islamic republic’s “surrender.”

Signs that the foes could return to the table after weeks of deadlock grew after Trump halted a short-lived military operation to reopen the strait, citing hopes for a deal.

“We’ve had very good talks over the last 24 hours, and it’s very possible that we’ll make a deal,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.

But he had warned earlier that if Iran did not honour what had been agreed, bombing would resume “at a much higher level and intensity.”

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said the US proposal remained “under review” and Tehran would communicate its position to mediator Pakistan “after finalising its views.”

Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has led Iran’s negotiations, warned that Washington sought “through a naval blockade, economic pressure and media manipulation, to destroy the country’s cohesion in order to force us to surrender.”

US news outlet Axios, citing two officials, reported both sides were close to agreement on a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and set a framework for nuclear negotiations.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key figure in initial talks in Islamabad, said he was “very hopeful that the current momentum will lead to a lasting agreement that secures durable peace and stability for the region and beyond.”

Macron Presses Tehran
French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, told his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian in a phone call Wednesday that attacks on UAE civilian infrastructure and ships near the strait were “unjustified,” urging all parties to lift their dual blockade in the waterway “without delay and without conditions.”

Pezeshkian told Macron that any full reopening of the strait required the lifting of the US naval blockade, adding that “excessive demands, threatening statements, and failure to adhere to necessary frameworks by the United States have further complicated the path of diplomacy,” according to the Iranian presidency.

The call came as France’s aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle transited the Suez Canal en route to the southern Red Sea, where it will pre-position for a possible multinational mission to restore navigation in the strait.

The deployment was intended to send “a signal that not only are we ready to secure the Strait of Hormuz but that we are also capable of doing so,” a Macron aide told reporters.

Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are leading the initiative, which more than 40 countries have joined in military planning.

Spain on Tuesday said it would not decide where a cruise ship with hantavirus cases would dock until epidemiological data had been analysed, casting uncertainty on the vessel’s next steps.

A health ministry statement came shortly after World Health Organization epidemic and pandemic preparedness director Maria Van Kerkhove said in Geneva that the ship would head for the Canary Islands.

“Based on the epidemiological data collected from the ship during its stopover in Cape Verde, it will be decided which port of call is most appropriate,” the health ministry said in a social media post.

“Until then, the Ministry of Health will not take any decision, as we have informed the World Health Organization.”

The ministry added in a later post that it had held talks with the WHO and that “this evening an inspection of the ship will be carried out by a team of epidemiologists” to detect potential symptoms or contacts.

Spanish government spokeswoman Elma Saiz told a press conference that “everything is prepared for care, assessment and, if necessary, disinfection, if the WHO requires it,” without clarifying whether the Canary Islands would take in the ship.

The vice president of the Canaries regional government, Manuel Dominguez, said he preferred that the ship go straight to mainland Spain because it had greater resources to handle the stricken vessel.

“If it does not have to be in the Canary Islands, then that would be better, because there may be other resources on the mainland,” he said in a radio interview, adding that any decision should be taken “with all possible guarantees”.

The leader of the Atlantic archipelago’s regional government, Fernando Clavijo, told reporters in Brussels that the ship “should be taken care of where it is” or go to the Netherlands because it flies under a Dutch flag.

Two hantavirus cases have been confirmed and another five are suspected among the 147 people who were on the cruise from Ushuaia in Argentina to Cape Verde off west Africa, the WHO has said.

AFP