At least 23 passengers from the hantavirus-infected cruise ship MV Hondius have already left the boat and returned home, including to the US, according to a shocking new report — and one of them has already gotten sick.
The travelers did not realize that they had been exposed to the deadly virus — which has a mortality rate of up to 40% — when they left the expedition vessel during its stop at Saint Helena, a tiny island in the South Atlantic, on April 23, according to a passenger who is still aboard the ship.
“There are 23 people wandering around there, and until three days ago, no one had contacted them,” the passenger told Spanish newspaper El Pais.
“The Australian went back to Australia, the one from Taiwan to Taiwan, the Americans to all corners of North America. The Englishman to England, the Dutch to their homes… I don’t remember the rest.”
One of those passengers, a Swiss man who had returned home with his wife, tested positive for hantavirus on Wednesday, authorities said.
The man was initially taken to a Zurich hospital and tested negative for the virus – which can lie dormant for up to eight weeks.
He was apparently just one of many expedition passengers who decided to hit the road during the Dutch vessel’s two-day stop in the British territory last month.
The passengers were only informed of the terrifying virus outbreak days ago, according to the traveler who spoke to El Pais.
The disease usually spreads by contact with mouse or rat feces or urine — but the World Health Organization suspects that the Dutch cruise liner carries a rare strain that spreads human-to-human.
The passenger claimed that the WHO didn’t begin contacting the escapees until three days ago, despite the first passenger getting sick on April 6.
That patient, a 70-year-old Dutchman, died on April 11 — almost two weeks before the Saint Helena stop.
In Saint Helena, his ill wife disembarked with his body — and nearly two-dozen other passengers.
The WHO said Wednesday that the ship’s operating company, Oceanwide Expeditions, had recently emailed departed passengers about the outbreak that had overtaken the ship, but didn’t specify when that communication began.
“International contact tracing is ongoing. Passengers who disembarked from the ship were informed of the hantavirus case by the ships’ operators and asked to report any signs and symptoms,” a WHO representative told The Post in a statement, adding that this is how they learned of the case confirmed in Switzerland.
“Working with national authorities and the ship’s operators, our teams have built a list of who was where when, in order to ensure that any potential exposure is documented and people can get help if they develop symptoms,” the rep said. “This contact tracing also helps to contain any potential spread.”
An Oceanwide Expeditions spokesperson said company officials were “currently working on details of passengers and crew who embarked and disembarked on the various legs of the voyage.”
But the passenger believed their efforts were too little, too late.
“We were in touch with them and kept asking ourselves, ‘When are they going to tell them something?’ Some people weren’t contacted until yesterday,” they reportedly said.
The deceased Dutchman’s wife, who also disembarked in Saint Helena, later succumbed to the virus at a Johannesburg hospital.
Argentine investigators now believe the couple was responsible for bringing the virus onboard, after picking it up from rodents while visiting a landfill during a bird-watching tour in the city of Ushuaia days before the ship departed from the Argentine port on March 20.
However, authorities previously said that the area and the surrounding province of Tierra del Fuego had never recorded a case of the hantavirus.
Though usually spread through rat droppings, the WHO said a rare strain of hantavirus that can spread between people and carries an alarming 40% mortality rate — the Andes virus – is the culprit behind the Hondius outbreak.
A third passenger has died and at least eight others have become sick with the virus while onboard the 353-foot vessel, which remains anchored off Cape Verde while waiting to port in the Canary Islands.
On Wednesday, three patients – a 56-year-old British national, a 41-year-old Dutch citizen and a 65-year-old German – believed to be infected with the virus were evacuated from the ship and taken to receive medical attention in the Netherlands.
The passengers, two of whom are believed to be seriously ill, were evacuated in order to receive medical care in the Netherlands, the WHO said.
Eerie photos showed at least one of the patients wearing head-to-toe protective gear on a gurney as they were removed from an ambulance and escorted to a waiting jet at the port in Cape Verde’s capital city, Praia.
Among those evacuated was the ship’s doctor, who was once in “serious condition” but has improved, Spain’s health ministry said.
The passengers and crew members still left on the ship aren’t showing any symptoms of the virus, which is typically contracted from inhaling infected rodent droppings, according to officials.
The unnerving development came as the WHO and Oceanwide Expeditions maintained the ship will port and disembark in Tenerife – though that possibility was reportedly a source of tense debate between Spanish authorities.
Fernando Clavijo, the incumbent president of the Canary Islands, told reporters Wednesday that his government has not received detailed information on how the process will be carried out – and raised fears that passengers could spread the hantavirus to citizens.
Reps for Spain’s central government have blasted his remarks as “irresponsible,” as health officials have said the risk of spreading hantavirus is very low, and given the fact there are 14 Spanish nationals on board, El Pais reported.
