Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation

Articles Business Environment Health Politics Arts & Culture Society

Special Series Hope You’re Well For the Love of the Game Living Rooms In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration Terra Cognita More special series >

For the Love of the Game

In Other Worlds: A Space Exploration

More special series >

Events The Walrus Talks The Walrus Video Room The Walrus Leadership Roundtables The Walrus Leadership Forums Article Club

The Walrus Video Room

The Walrus Leadership Roundtables

The Walrus Leadership Forums

Subscribe Renew your subscription Change your address Magazine Issues Newsletters Podcasts

Renew your subscription

The Walrus Lab Hire The Walrus Lab Amazon First Novel Award

Amazon First Novel Award

How Cruises Became Modern-Day Plague Ships

It’s a wonder why anybody pays thousands of dollars to sail a petri dish

Six weeks ago, it would have seemed like the birding adventure of everyone’s dreams. The Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1, 2026, with roughly 150 people on board, bound for the islands of the South Atlantic. Among them was couple Leo Schilperood and Mirjam Schilperood-Huisman, seventy- and sixty-nine-year-old Netherlanders who had been travelling for around three months in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. The pair were amateur ornithologists; they had published a paper together in 1984 about pink-footed geese. In 2013, they reportedly spotted the Serendib scops owl in Sri Lanka.

While the ship visited South Georgia, on April 6, Leo took ill with gastrointestinal symptoms. He deteriorated and developed respiratory distress before dying on board on April 11. Hondius went on to stop at Tristan da Cunha, Inaccessible Island, Nightingale Island, Gough Island, and Saint Helena—isolated and scarcely populated British Overseas Territories on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Saint Helena, alone among these, has an airport, and here, Leo’s body was brought ashore. Mirjam came ashore too. She had also developed gastrointestinal symptoms. She flew to South Africa, intending to continue home to the Netherlands, but she collapsed in the Johannesburg airport and was admitted to a local ICU. She died shortly thereafter. Thirty other passengers left the ship in Saint Helena. On a subsequent stop at Ascension Island, another passenger, a United Kingdom national, went ashore, having taken ill.

On May 2, UK officials notified the World Health Organization that a cluster of severe respiratory illness had broken out on Hondius, that there had been two deaths, and that another passenger was critically ill. By May 8, six passengers were confirmed to have tested positive for the Andes strain of hantavirus. This strain has been associated with person-to-person spread in the past; it is the only known strain of hantavirus that has demonstrated this ability. It has since been reported that the strain isolated from Hondius, which appears to have spread between passengers and crew, is not significantly mutated.

Hantavirus is distributed around the world and infects about........

© The Walrus