What the deadly hantavirus outbreak on MV Hondius teaches us after covid

The deadly hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius highlights persistent infection risks and hard lessons from the covid era

Health personnel assisting patients onto a boat from the cruise ship MV Hondius, while stationary off the port of Praia, the capital of Cape Verde. Picture: AFP via Getty Images

So, health authorities are scrambling to track the movements of dozens of people who disembarked the cruise ship at the centre of a deadly hantavirus outbreak before isolation measures were put in place — that's the bad news.

The good news? Well, the World Health Organization (WHO) is playing down the risk to public health and said it is not expecting a global epidemic — although Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, did admit there could be more cases due to the incubation period of the Andes virus — the variant of hantavirus linked to the outbreak.