The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1. Within days, one passenger had become ill. Within weeks, the voyage had become the focus of an international health response after cases of Andes virus, a type of hantavirus, were identified among passengers and crew. By early May, several people had died. Passengers and crew have since left the ship, but many are now facing quarantine and monitoring elsewhere, along with intense public scrutiny.

For those affected, the threat is not only medical. It is psychological too. Quarantine asks people to live with a difficult combination of fear, uncertainty and loss of control. Research tells us that our ability to tolerate uncertainty is broadly related to our levels of distress, so the uncertainty surrounding Andes virus could influence how worried people feel about their health and safety.

Hantaviruses are a family of viruses usually spread to humans through contact with infected rodents or their urine, droppings or saliva. Andes virus is unusual because limited person-to-person transmission has also been recorded. For passengers and crew, this means living with a threat that is serious, unfamiliar and difficult to judge. They are also doing so under the watchful eye of the world’s media, at the centre of an international emergency medical response, while facing unplanned isolation away from home. This is a particular kind of psychological strain.

A similar incident occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Diamond Princess cruise ship was quarantined for several weeks. During that time, passengers experienced fear of infection, hypervigilance – being constantly on alert, scanning the........

© The Conversation