French Passenger from Hantavirus-Hit Ship Tests Positive for Virus

PARIS (Reuters) - A French passenger who was on a cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak has tested positive for the virus and her condition is deteriorating, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist said on Monday 11 May 2026.

The passenger was among five French people who were on the ship. The four other passengers tested negative but will be re-tested, she told France Inter radio, adding that so far French authorities have traced 22 contact cases.

"What is key, is to act at the start and break the virus transmission chains. This is what we are doing with the Prime Minister, notably with a decree that came out today that will allow us to strengthen isolation measures for contact cases and to protect the population," she said.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu will hold a meeting on the hantavirus crisis later on Monday.

Asked if France had enough masks and tests to cope with a potential crisis, Rist said: "Yes, France is ready."

Additional Information: Evacuation of Passengers from Virus-Hit Cruise Ship to be Completed on Monday

(Reuters) - The evacuation of passengers from a Dutch-flagged luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak will be completed on Monday 11 May 2026 with flights from Australia and the Netherlands, Spain's health minister has said.

One flight from Australia will evacuate six passengers from the Spanish island of Tenerife and another from the Netherlands will take eighteen passengers, with both flights also carrying passengers from other countries that did not send their own repatriation flights, officials have said.

Eight people no longer on the ship have fallen ill, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) tally from Friday 8 May 2026, of whom six are confirmed to have contracted the virus. Three have died - a Dutch couple and a German national.

On Sunday 10 May 2026, the US Department of Health and Human Services said one of the seventeen Americans being repatriated has tested positive for the Andes strain of the virus while a second has mild symptoms.

The French health minister said a French passenger had tested positive for the virus and that person's health was deteriorating. It was not clear if these two cases were included in the six reported by the WHO.

The MV Hondius was carrying 147 passengers and crew when a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses among passengers was first reported to the WHO on Sunday 3 May 2026.

By then, 34 other passengers had departed the vessel, which first sailed from Argentina in March with stops in the Antarctic and other locations before heading north to waters off Cape Verde west of Africa. The vessel was briefly held there last week after news of the outbreak emerged.

The outbreak of the virus, usually spread by rodents but also transmittable person-to-person in rare cases of close contact, was first detected by health officials in Johannesburg on Saturday 2 May 2026 treating a British man who was taken into intensive care after disembarking the ship, about three weeks after another passenger had died.

The luxury cruise ship left for Spain's Canary Islands off West Africa on Wednesday 6 May 2026 from the coast of Cape Verde when the WHO and European Union asked the country to manage the evacuation of passengers after the outbreak was detected.

Planes carrying passengers were to leave Tenerife for Canada, the Netherlands, Turkey, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States on Sunday and Monday. Some passengers have also been flown to Madrid.

The passengers will be tested upon arrival and then either taken to hospitals or quarantine facilities or transported home for isolation.

The WHO has recommended a 42-day quarantine for all passengers from the boat from Sunday, its director of epidemic and pandemic management, Maria Van Kerkhove, said in a briefing.

30 crew members will remain on board and sail to the Netherlands on Monday evening where the ship will be disinfected.

Health officials urged calm, reminding a public scarred from the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic that this virus was far less contagious and posed little risk to the general population.

"This is not COVID and we don't want to treat it like COVID," acting US CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya said in an interview with CNN on Sunday, adding the seventeen US passengers from the ship would be given the choice of isolating at home or at a facility in Nebraska.

Spain's health ministry also downplayed the risk to the broader population. It added that rodents had not been detected aboard the ship.