Public Health

How Big of a Deal Is Hantavirus?

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Liz Wolfe | 5.11.2026 9:30 AM

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How worried should you be? The cruise ship on which hantavirus had been spreading—the MV Hondius—docked over the weekend and let off its roughly 150 passengers. Medical repatriation flights have been arranged by most of the 23 countries with nationals aboard the ship. Another 32 passengers had already disembarked at an earlier stop (the Atlantic island of St. Helena, near Africa) and flew home on April 24, before the outbreak had been detected.

Three passengers died of hantavirus, which is typically contracted via exposure to rodent droppings, urine, or saliva. The people who died all appear to have had the Andes variant, which spreads via human-to-human contact. Hantaviruses can cause either hantavirus pulmonary syndrome or hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome; the type currently spreading is the former.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is processing all 17 American passengers at a facility in Nebraska, but it's not clear exactly what next steps look like—likely quarantine, since we know the disease's incubation periods are rather long. One of the Americans brought home has reportedly tested "mildly positive" for hantavirus, according to HHS—which sounds insane, because being positive or negative for a virus is a binary. How can you be "mildly" positive? But I digress. Another American has developed symptoms. Both were transported aboard the same flight as the rest, but with additional containment measures in place "out of an abundance of caution." I'd argue we need even more caution, and that there has not been an abundance of it, if the goal is to actually contain this terrible Andes variant and prevent further spread.

Here's why: We're getting more indications that there is asymptomatic spread. And........

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