Frequently asked questions

If you sailed on the MV Hondius voyage that departed Ushuaia on April 1, 2026, you should treat yourself as potentially exposed and monitor for symptoms for at least 6 weeks after disembarking. The same applies to close household and travel contacts of anyone who sailed.

That does not mean infection is likely. As of the most recent WHO update, the attack rate is in the single digits across roughly 150 people on board, and the index exposure is currently believed to have happened before boarding (in Argentina), not on the ship itself — though some onboard close-contact transmission cannot be ruled out. Watch the Timeline for each new datapoint from ECDC, WHO, and Argentine health authorities.

This site does not give travel advice. Decisions about cancellation should be made on the basis of guidance from your country’s official travel-health authority (linked in Resources) and any specific notice issued by your cruise line.

Two factors that change the picture quickly:

1. Whether the affected vessel is yours. Outbreaks tend to be ship-specific. The MV Hondius is one of relatively few polar expedition ships and is currently out of service while in transit to the Canary Islands for investigation and disinfection.
2. Whether the strain shows person-to-person transmission. This one — Andes virus — does, on a limited basis among close contacts. So far that has not changed broad travel guidance, but it does change infection-control posture for household contacts of cases. Watch the Sources feed for further ECDC and WHO updates.

For most hantaviruses, no. The main exception is Andes virus (ANDV) in South America, where limited person-to-person and even nosocomial transmission has been documented.

The MV Hondius cluster is one of those exceptions. ANDV has been confirmed in at least one case by reference-laboratory testing, and the pattern of illness — most notably the second case being the spouse of the first — is consistent with close-contact transmission overlaid on a presumed common rodent-aerosol exposure in Argentina before boarding.

For practical infection-control purposes that means: standard contact and droplet precautions around symptomatic cases, no need for general public-mask measures, and heightened vigilance for household contacts of confirmed cases for at least six weeks.

There is no widely-licensed vaccine. A Korean-produced inactivated vaccine, Hantavax, is authorized in parts of Asia for protection against Hantaan virus (HFRS), but it is not used elsewhere and is not effective against the New World HPS-causing viruses. Several experimental DNA and viral-vector vaccines are in clinical trials but none are in routine use.

Hantavirus testing is not a routine point-of-care service. It is performed at reference laboratories using serology (IgM/IgG ELISA) or RT-PCR on blood. If you have symptoms after a plausible exposure, present to a clinician — emergency department if symptoms are severe — and ask them to coordinate testing with your country’s national reference lab. The clinician should know your travel history, including the ship and dates.

Risk from belongings is generally low, because the virus is fragile outside a host and is inactivated by standard disinfectants and sunlight. Reasonable precautions for items that left the vessel:

• Launder washable clothing in hot water with detergent.
• Wipe hard-shell luggage with a household disinfectant (1:10 bleach solution or an EPA-registered hospital disinfectant) and let it dry fully.
• For soft luggage you cannot wash, leave it in a sealed bag in a sunny dry area for several days before unpacking.

If you find dried droppings on belongings, do not sweep or vacuum. Dampen with disinfectant, wipe with disposable cloths while wearing gloves and a fitted mask, and discard the cleaning material in a sealed bag.

The case counts on the Overview come from a hand-curated stats.json file that the maintainer updates against the most recent figure from CDC, WHO, ECDC, or the relevant national public-health agency. Each update is dated.

The Sources page is auto-generated. A scheduled job runs every six hours, queries a fixed list of RSS feeds and APIs (CDC HAN, CDC Travel Health Notices, WHO Disease Outbreak News, ECDC, Reuters, Google News), filters for items mentioning the outbreak, and writes them as JSON files into the repository, which triggers a fresh build.

The Timeline is a mix: confirmed entries are curated by the maintainer with citations. Entries flagged “Pending review” are auto-suggested by the same job and removed if they cannot be verified.