Hantavirus ship Hondius to dock in Rotterdam

The cruise ship Hondius, on which the recent hantavirus outbreak occurred, is expected to dock in Rotterdam on Monday by midday. There are still 27 people on board: 25 crew members and two Dutch public health officials, none of whom are currently showing any symptoms of the virus.

Once the ship arrives at the port, everyone on board will be immediately tested by medical staff from the public health body GGD, in consultation with the staff who handled the evacuees that already came back via Eindhoven airport.

The ship will then undergo a thorough disinfection, which is currently being developed by specialist pest control company EWS Group. The group was hired by Oceanwide Expeditions – the owner company of Hondius – and is working in collaboration with national health institute RIVM.

The port has been partially closed off and prepared. It is still partially unclear what will happen to the 25 crew members once they’ve been taken off the ship and cleared by medical examiners.

The crew includes people from the Philippines, Netherlands, Ukraine, Russia and Poland. All will have a mandatory six week quarantine period after arriving. Portable cabins have been set up to house the foreign nationals in Rotterdam before they can be repatriated.

The body of a 65-year-old German woman, who died after contracting the virus in early May, is also still on board. Whether her body can be repatriated to Germany will be determined once it arrives.

The outbreak has claimed three lives: a 70-year-old Dutch man from Haulerwijk in Friesland who died on board on April 11, his 69-year-old wife who died in a Johannesburg hospital three days after disembarking with his body at St Helena, and the German woman whose body remains on board.

The WHO believes the Dutch couple were infected before the voyage began, while travelling overland in South America.

Hantavirus is normally spread by contact with the urine and droppings of infected rodents, and only the South American Andes strain is known to pass between humans, almost always among people in very close contact.

The WHO’s epidemic and pandemic preparedness director, Maria van Kerkhove, told a press conference earlier this month the outbreak posed no risk of becoming a pandemic: “This is not Covid, this is not influenza.”