Is This the Next COVID? Hantavirus Is Now in 9 Countries — What You Need to Know NOW

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]this weekend. What exactly is going to happen?

[00:00:04]This is a really complicated and sensitive operation to get these passengers off the boat safely, of course, while also keeping them in isolation. It's something that the Spanish authorities have continued to address. There is even protest on the Canary Islands against the boat docking.

[00:00:19]So, you can understand just how sensitive of an issue it is. Now, Spanish authorities say they have an ironclad system in place. It's going to be a closed-circuit loop. There are medical facilities and medical medical personnel waiting to provide treatment to those who need it, waiting to provide any support that may be needed. They're going to have special entrances to enter those medical facilities that are specifically prepared for these passengers. They will all be seen, treated if they are needed to to be treated. And then the other element to this, the part two of this, if you will, is repatriating those citizens to their individual countries. You have more than 20 different countries >> A cruise ship carrying nearly 150 people from 23 different countries is sailing towards Spain right now. On board, a deadly virus that most of the world has never heard of. In ports from Cape Verde to Tenerife, health workers in hazmat suits are waiting. And in nine countries across four continents, governments are tracing contacts, placing people in isolation, and monitoring for symptoms, some of which might not appear for up to eight weeks. Three people are already dead. The virus is called hantavirus.

[00:01:29]The specific strain is called Andes. And tonight, on the Daily News Drop, we are going to take you through every single thing doctors and health authorities know about it, scene by scene, fact by fact. Here is the question driving this entire broadcast. Is this the beginning of something we have all seen before, or is this a contained outbreak that will end at sea? Let's find out. Before we continue, this is Daily News Drop. If you are enjoying the video, subscribe to the channel, leave a like, and comment below.

[00:01:57]On April 1st, 2026, the MV Hondius, a Dutch-flagged cruise ship, left Ushuaia, Argentina. Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world. The ship was carrying passengers from 23 different nationalities. Among them, a 70-year-old Dutch man and his 69-year-old wife. They had spent 4 months, November 2025 through April 2026, traveling through Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay on a birding trip. Remote areas, close to nature, close to the rodents, close to what would eventually kill them. 5 days into the voyage, that Dutchman developed a fever, headache, abdominal pain, diarrhea. The ship had one doctor, a medical facility designed for seasickness and minor injuries, not ventilators, not scanners, not respiratory emergencies. On April 11th, a 70-year-old man died on board the ship. His body was not removed for 13 days. 13 days aboard a vessel with 147 other people. His wife disembarked at the remote island of Saint Helena on April 24th. She was already sick. She boarded a flight to Johannesburg on April 25th. She was too sick to continue. She collapsed. She died in a hospital on April 26th. Days later, laboratory tests confirmed hantavirus. A third passenger, a German woman, developed fever and malaise on April 28th. She progressed to pneumonia. She died May 2nd, still on the ship.

[00:03:20]Postmortem testing confirmed Andes virus, the same strain, the same killer.

[00:03:25]The World Health Organization was not formally notified until May 2nd. Three people were already dead before the world's top health body knew this was happening. And by then, nearly 40 passengers had already disembarked at various island stops scattered across the globe, returning to their home countries, unknowingly carrying a virus with an incubation period of up to 8 weeks. transmission.

[00:03:47]It certainly is, Selma Abdel-Aziz. Thank you so much. And let's go live now to CNN's Pau Mascaró in Madrid. Pau, what are Spanish authorities saying about this hantavirus outbreak ahead of the cruise ship docking?

[00:04:00]Well, Pamela, they have been trying over the last hours to reassure the local population that there is no risk on of contagion or that at least is very low.

[00:04:09]A message they have been also sharing with the regional authorities that they have opposed of the ship docking into the port of Granadilla de Abona. And actually to demonstrate that everything is going to happen safely, they have finally defined the protocol on which they are going to transfer all the passengers from the boat to the respective countries. The MV Handeos is expected to dock at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Spain's Canary Islands, in the early hours of Sunday morning. And the operation Spanish authorities have put in place to get these passengers off safely is one of the most complex public health logistics exercises we have seen in recent memory. Spanish authorities are calling it a closed circuit loop.

[00:04:51]Medical facilities and medical personnel are waiting at the port with special entrances specifically prepared for these passengers. Every single person will be assessed. Those who need treatment will receive it. Those who are asymptomatic will still be monitored before being cleared for repatriation.

[00:05:06]But there is deep political tension here. There have been public protests on the Canary Islands against the ship docking at all. The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, publicly opposed the arrival out of concern for the local population.

[00:05:19]Despite that, Spain's National Health Ministry approved the docking stating it was, quote, "in accordance with international law and humanitarian principles." Now, more than 140 people from over 20 different countries are on that ship. That is not one repatriation.

[00:05:34]That is 20 separate national operations happening simultaneously.

[00:05:39]Spanish authorities are coordinating directly with each of those nations right now to arrange specialist flights home by nationality. Here is how the physical transfer works. When the ship docks, passengers leave the vessel group by group, by nationality. They wear full protective equipment throughout. There is zero contact with the Canarian local population. They boarded sealed escorted buses, a 15-minute drive directly to the airport, and from there onto charter flights to their home countries. If a passenger is not medically cleared to fly directly to their destination, they do not leave the ship. That is the rule, no exceptions. The 14 Spanish nationals on board, they will be brought to a military hospital here in Madrid. On the very top floor of that building, there is a high-level isolation unit specifically prepared for these passengers. Any symptomatic case goes directly into that unit. As of right now, none of the passengers or crew still on the MV Hondius are symptomatic.

[00:06:34]But, Spanish authorities have just confirmed the first suspected hantavirus case on Spanish soil. A person in Alicante, in eastern Spain, showing symptoms consistent with the virus. A PCR test has been performed. Results are pending. And the 17 American passengers still on board, the CDC is sending a team to escort them home on a chartered flight. Once back in the United States, they are expected to quarantine in Nebraska. Oregon Congresswoman Janelle Bynum has publicly stated that the federal government is failing those citizens, and that none of the Americans on board have received clear guidance on how to get home safely. She is calling on the CDC and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to make a real plan. All right, Pam Mascarenas, thank you so much. And let's head to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where CNN's Ivan Perez Armenti is standing by. Ivan, it's still not clear how this outbreak started, but the WHO is looking at whether the Dutch couple who died were infected while sightseeing in Argentina before that cruise. What more can you tell us about that?

[00:07:38]Hi, Amara. And the Argentine Ministry of Health is currently reconstructing the route taken by the couple identified as the index case of this hantavirus outbreak. Investigators are working to pinpoint the exact origin of the infection. Let's remember that the ship set sail from Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, on April the 1st.

[00:07:57]However, authorities have not yet confirmed that the contagion occurred within Argentina. The virus has an incubation period of 1 to 8 weeks, and the couple had recently traveled through other Latin American countries before arriving in the south.

[00:08:12]The question every health investigator on the planet is trying to answer right now is this: Where did patient zero get infected? And to answer that, we need to go back to Argentina. The Argentine Ministry of Health is currently reconstructing the entire route taken by the Dutch couple identified as the index case of this outbreak. The ship set sail from Ushuaia on April 1st, but that couple arrived in Argentina back in November of 2025. They spent 4 months crossing Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina on a birding trip, visiting remote rural areas where the species of rat known to carry the Andes virus is present. They crossed back and forth over the Chile-Argentina border multiple times.

[00:08:52]They visited Neuquén Province in January 2026. They visited Misiones in northeastern Argentina. Both areas have historically been identified by the WHO as regions where hantavirus is endemic.

[00:09:04]They returned to Argentina from Uruguay just 4 days before boarding the MV Hondius. 4 days. Here is the critical detail. Ushuaia itself, the port where the cruise departed, has never in its recorded history had a single hantavirus case. Residents there told reporters they were completely shocked by the news. In a small, tight-knit community, word of a hantavirus case would spread instantly. This was entirely unexpected there. So, investigators are not looking at Ushuaia. They are looking at the 4 months that came before it. Argentine technical teams are now physically going to those sites along the couple's route, trapping and testing rodents, conducting forensic epidemiological work.

[00:09:45]Authorities have not yet confirmed on which country's soil the infection occurred. The virus incubates for 1 to 8 weeks, and the couple also traveled through Chile and Uruguay. Every border crossing is being investigated, and here is the bigger picture inside Argentina.

[00:09:59]This virus was already on the rise before this ship ever made international headlines. The Ministry of Health reports 24 hantavirus cases inside Argentina so far in 2026, and 101 during the most recent full epidemiological campaign, nearly double the 57 cases reported in the period before that. The Andes virus was not new to Argentina.

[00:10:21]What is new is that it is now on a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, touching nine countries.

[00:10:26]Here is the picture as it stands tonight. Hantavirus has now reached, or is actively being monitored in, at least nine countries. Walk through this with us. The Netherlands. Two of the three confirmed deaths occurred here. Multiple patients have been evacuated and hospitalized at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen. Germany. One confirmed death, a German woman who died on board the ship on May 2nd. Postmortem tests confirmed the Andes strain. South Africa. A critically ill patient. The ship's own doctor was medically evacuated here and remains in intensive care. South Africa also sequenced the virus and confirmed the first laboratory diagnosis. Contact tracing is ongoing for 82 passengers and six crew members from an April 25th flight from Saint Helena to Johannesburg, a flight the Dutch woman who later died was also on.

[00:11:15]The United Kingdom. Two confirmed hantavirus cases. A third suspected case, a British national, is on the remote island of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. UK authorities are requiring 45 days of isolation for all returning British passengers from the ship. Switzerland. One confirmed case, a passenger diagnosed after disembarking and returning home. Canada, three people self-isolating, two in Ontario, one in Quebec. One of those three was never on the cruise. They were simply on the same flight home as two Canadian passengers from the ship. France, eight French nationals, none of whom were ever on the cruise, have been identified as close contacts of a confirmed case. They were on the same April 25th flight from St. Helena to Johannesburg. One of them is now showing mild symptoms. All are under isolation and being tested. Singapore, two residents, both men in their 60s, are self-isolating and being tested. One has mild symptoms, the other is completely asymptomatic. The United States, at least nine residents are under monitoring across six states. The CDC has activated a level three emergency response, its lowest tier.

[00:12:22]American doctors have been formally alerted nationwide to watch for imported cases. Nine countries, three dead, dozens in isolation, and a virus with a potential eight-week incubation period is still ticking for people who may not even know they were exposed. The question that is on everyone's mind is the one nobody wants to say out loud. Is this the beginning of something we have all lived through before? Here is a straight answer. The World Health Organization has been very direct. Here is exactly what they said. This is not SARS-CoV-2. This is not the start of a COVID pandemic. This is an outbreak on a ship, a confined area, with five confirmed cases. It does not spread the same way coronaviruses do. It is very different.

[00:13:04]>> is downplaying that hantavirus is similar at all to COVID. Listen to what one official said earlier today.

[00:13:11]This is not SARS-CoV-2. This is not the start of a COVID pandemic. This is an outbreak that we see on a ship. There's a confined area. We have five confirmed cases so far. We completely understand why these questions are coming, but this is not the same situation we were in 6 years ago. Um it doesn't spread the same way um like coronaviruses do. It's very different. It's So, what does the science actually tell us? There are more than 50 types of hantavirus in the world. Of all of them, only one, the Andes strain, the exact strain on this ship, is known to spread from person to person at all. And even then, that spread requires close, prolonged, direct contact. Not a cough across a room, not a shared ventilation system, not a brief encounter in an elevator. Close, sustained, direct.

[00:13:59]Compare that to COVID, which spread through the air, through rooms, through buildings, through brief encounters that lasted seconds. The chains of COVID transmission blossomed out of control within weeks across every continent.

[00:14:11]With hantavirus, with the Andes strain specifically, those chains are limited and traceable. Every single contact is being followed. Those chains are very likely to end.

[00:14:22]Now, here is the legitimate concern that nobody should dismiss. Nearly 40 passengers disembarked from the MV Hondius at various island stops before anyone on that ship knew there was a hantavirus outbreak on board. At the time, the ship's only doctor, who himself later fell critically ill, did not yet understand what this infection was. Those passengers had signed up for only part of the voyage. The decisions made in the moment were reasonable, but the exposure window is long. The Andes virus incubates for 1 to 8 weeks.

[00:14:52]Someone exposed on that ship in early April could theoretically not show symptoms until June. Health authorities across nine countries are monitoring those individuals every single day.

[00:15:02]Temperature checks, symptom assessments, restricted activities, and none of those who disembarked have become ill yet. So far, so good, but the clock is still running for some of them. What about mutation? Is there any concern that this virus could evolve into something more contagious? The answer, based on everything health authorities know right now, is no. There is no indication that the Andes strain is rapidly mutating. It behaves the way it always has. We know its limits. We know what stops it. And there is one more thing that needs to be said tonight, something that is not getting the attention it deserves. The CDC, America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been largely silent since this outbreak went global.

[00:15:41]No national press conference, no statement from HHS Secretary Robert F.

[00:15:45]Kennedy Jr., just state-level officials stepping into the gap. What we know is that the CDC's budget and staffing, including the specific unit responsible for cruise ship health screening, have been significantly cut over the past year.

[00:15:57]State and local agencies have also been affected. There is a real federal information gap right now. The Americans on that ship and the Americans being monitored at home deserve a direct national briefing. That has not happened yet. The international response, however, outside the United States federal government, has been a different story. The WHO deployed an expert directly onto the ship. South Africa sequenced within days. Argentina launched field investigations. Multiple countries are coordinating contact tracing in real time. That is what international public health cooperation looks like when it works. And right now, it is working.

[00:16:35]What is your takeaway here? How contagious is this?

[00:16:39]Well, I think, Pamela, that this is indeed a rather contained phenomenon, and it will not provide a COVID-like epidemic that went global as as COVID virus did. This is a virus that usually is not transmissible from person to person, but this may be a distinctive Andes strain, a South American strain, that can, on occasion, be transmitted from person to person.

[00:17:09]But so far, it's a very confined circumstance to the to the passengers on this cruise ship. Those who have been disembarked are being watched by public health authorities in their home countries. Right, because the last I read, it was announced by a Dutch official that nearly 40 people disembarked after that the one passenger died and it became clear there was a virus. And so, what is your concern in terms of tracing and going back and seeing who all those people came into contact with? And do you have concern that this virus could mutate and become more contagious?

[00:17:50]Well, as to mutation, I don't think we have to go there. There's no indication that this is a rapidly mutating virus.

[00:17:59]Uh this is another instance that emphasizes the importance of global public health, the World Health Organization, and then working with national public health authorities. They're following these disembarked patients very, very carefully. And I shouldn't call them patients. They're persons. They're healthy.

[00:18:19]At the moment, none of these folks who have disembarked have become ill. So far, so good.

[00:18:26]Here is the complete medical picture.

[00:18:27]Everything doctors know right now about the Andes strain of hantavirus. There is no cure. There is no widely available vaccine anywhere in the world. Treatment is entirely supportive. Doctors keep patients breathing, keep their organs functioning, and wait for the body to fight the virus. The only tools are early detection, early hospitalization, and strict isolation. That is the entire medical arsenal available against this disease. Symptoms begin 1 to 8 weeks after exposure. The first phase looks almost exactly like the flu. Fever, fatigue, headache, muscle aches, gastrointestinal problems. Easy to dismiss. Easy to misdiagnose. Then comes the danger phase, and it arrives fast.

[00:19:10]Rapid progression to pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and shock. One American doctor who happened to be vacationing on the MV Hondius and ended up treating patients himself after the ship's own physician fell critically ill, described it this way.

[00:19:25]You can go from seriously ill to critically ill very quickly. That is not a metaphor. That is the clinical reality of this disease. In a previous Andes virus outbreak in Argentina between 2018 and 2019, a single introduction of the virus led to 34 infections. The reproductive number, meaning how many people each infected person passes it to, was estimated at around 2.12 before public health interventions. After isolation and quarantine measures were in place, it dropped below one. Below one means the outbreak dies out. That is the target right now. Diagnosis requires blood test for hantavirus specific antibodies or PCR molecular testing during the acute phase. Neither is a test most emergency rooms would reach for automatically, which is exactly why the CDC has now formally alerted American doctors nationwide. The message is simple. If a patient has these symptoms and has been in contact with a confirmed case or has recently traveled to South America, test for hantavirus immediately. Do not wait. And if you have recently traveled to South America and are experiencing fever, respiratory symptoms, or flu-like illness right now, call your doctor. Tell them where you have been. Tell them about any possible rodent exposure. Those two sentences could save your life. Then the passengers were put into uh isolation while at sea in order to prevent further, if any, person-to-person transmission. Local health authorities have been notified of everyone who disembarked. Those people are being monitored carefully. So, I think this is an example of international collaboration dealing with what we trust will be a confined circumstance. So far, so good. So far, so good. We hope it stays that way. Of course, we don't want to be an alarmist, but I think a lot of people have curiosity about this. Here is where things stand as of tonight and what we are watching in the hours and days ahead. The MV Hondius arrives at the port of Gran Canaria, Tenerife in the early hours of Sunday morning. The evacuation operation begins immediately.

[00:21:35]Passengers leave by nationality in full protective equipment directly to the airport. No contact with the local Canarian population. No exceptions. The 17 American passengers will be escorted home by a CDC team on a chartered flight and are expected to quarantine in Nebraska. 14 Spanish nationals go to the military hospital isolation unit in Madrid. The remaining passengers are repatriated on specialist flights arranged by each of their home countries. Argentina continues its field investigation. Trapping and testing rodents along the route the Dutch couple traveled for 4 months before this voyage began. That forensic work will take weeks. But its findings matter enormously, not just for this outbreak, but for preventing the next one.

[00:22:18]Contact tracing continues for over 80 passengers and crew members from the April 25th Airlink flight from St. Helena to Johannesburg. That is the flight the Dutch woman who later died also took.

[00:22:30]Every person on that aircraft is being tracked and the incubation window remains open. For some people connected to this outbreak, the worst-case scenario has not yet arrived.

[00:22:40]Health authorities in nine countries will continue daily monitoring for weeks. treated as outbreak investigations.

[00:22:47]It became very clear very fast that just tracing the chain of contacts, which is what you do in an epidemic investigation, was yielding many more cases and then it went out of control and it became clear it was turning into a pandemic, right? The chains of transmission just blossomed like crazy across the population. It became a pandemic and now it's endemic as a respiratory virus. With this infection, if there is good news, and hopefully there will continue to be, the chains of transmission should be pretty limited. We are tracing specific contacts who were in contact >> What we know and what is genuinely reassuring is that none of the people who disembarked before this outbreak was identified have become ill. Every day that passes without a new case is good.

[00:23:32]Three people are dead. A ship carrying nearly 150 people from 23 countries is hours from docking in Spain. Nine nations are on alert. And a virus with an 8-week incubation window is still being tracked across four continents.

[00:23:47]This is not COVID. The science is clear.

[00:23:49]The WHO is clear. But that does not mean we look away. It means we stay informed, we stay calm, and we do not confuse low risk with no risk. The Daily News Drop will continue tracking every development as this ship docks, as passengers return home, and as contact tracing unfolds across nine countries. We will be here.

[00:24:09]I am Ryan George. Stay informed.