A boat infested with a deadly virus that already had deaths on land is spreading fast and has no cure! On May 2nd, 2026, a boat named MV Hondius that departed from Ushuaia, Argentina, carrying 147 passengers was reported to have 7 cases of Hantavirus. 2 were laboratory confirmed and the other 5 were suspected cases. There have been 3 deaths, 1 critically ill patient, and 3 individuals reporting mild symptoms.
Hantavirus is primarily acquired through contact with urine, faeces, or saliva of infected rodents like mice, cotton rats, or deer mice. Hantavirus is pretty rare in humans but it could be deadly with contact with a fatality rate of 30% to 50%. Early symptoms of Hantavirus are fever, fatigue and muscle aches; early symptoms show up anywhere from 4 to 42 days after exposure and it might get mistaken for the flu. Hantavirus has been around for many centuries.
It first began in Europe and Asia in the 1900s, with outbreaks affecting farmers and military personnel in parts of Europe like Russia, Sweden, and Finland. Thousands of troops contracted the virus in the first world war and the Korean War. While it has declined, it still accounts for the thousands of deaths and the only way they stop it from spreading was seasonal weather changes and isolation. At that time, scientists didn’t have a name for the Hantavirus, and, for them, it was a new thing.
The MV Hondius is docked off the waters of Spain by Cape Verde while scientists and doctors try to find any type of cure or any way to stop the spread. Before anyone reported the virus on the ship, some passengers got off the ship in parts of Africa, America, and Europe. The passengers on land were later discovered to have the Hantavirus and they got put into isolation. On the boat, there have been 3 confirmed deaths, those being a 70-year old Dutch man, his 69 year old wife, and a German female.
The passengers on the boat are protesting and wanting to get off the ship, some even making videos and posting them to social media asking viewers for help, but people don’t want them off the boat- they fear another Covid 19 is going to happen. Covid 19 made people lose jobs, school, and lives and in some people that fear is still embedded in them. Covid 19 had a fatality rate of 1.03% to 3.4%, but that still managed to kill 7.1 million people all around the world, and, with the Hantavirus having a higher fatality rate, it is likely the world wouldn’t want them to get off that boat.
The captain told the passengers that the ship is safe after the first death: ‘’it was due to natural causes we believe.’’ The reason he said that was because, at that point, the crew thought the death wasn’t from a contagious illness; later, passengers criticized that message because the hantavirus outbreak became clearer afterward. Some said they felt the early explanation made the situation seem less serious than it turned out to be.
