The hantavirus-ridden MV Hondius is preparing to welcome a fresh batch of passengers – just weeks after a deadly outbreak killed three people and sickened many others aboard the Dutch expedition cruise liner.
The doomed vessel – which is currently undergoing an intensive deep clean – is slated to set sail June 13 on a week-long Arctic voyage through Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago.
Oceanwide Expeditions, the vessel’s operating company, has already axed two scheduled departures, one on May 29 and the other on June 5, to allow an “in-depth cleaning process to be completed” after the nightmare outbreak erupted during a transatlantic cruise last month.
Roughly 140 passengers and crew disembarked in Spain’s Canary Islands on May 10, after a weeks-long voyage descended into chaos when an elderly Dutch couple unknowingly brought aboard the rare and highly lethal Andes strain of hantavirus after contracting it in Argentina.
Unlike all other hantaviruses, the Andes strain can spread from person to person and carries a 40% mortality rate.
The Dutch couple and a German passenger died during the outbreak, while many others became infected or spent the remainder of the voyage in isolation.
Now docked in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the ill-fated ship remains under heightened health scrutiny.
Oceanwide said remaining crew members from the voyage were transferred to quarantine facilities on Saturday, while captain Jan Dobrogowski was transported to Poland.
Some Dutch crew members were permitted to quarantine at home.
Though the company initially estimated sanitizing the ship would take just three to four days, Rotterdam public health inspectors later “advised additional cleaning,” Oceanwide said Monday.
Still, the company insists, the ship will be ready to return to service – and all sailings from June 13 onwards will “proceed as scheduled,” it announced.
CEO Rémi Bouysset also said the vessel will resume operations “fully prepared and with the highest possible standards of safety and operational readiness.”
“Like any company facing an exceptional situation, Oceanwide Expeditions has been impacted over recent weeks. However, we remain resilient, focused, and financially solid,” Bouysset wrote in a statement released last week.
Meanwhile, new infections linked to the outbreak on board continue to surface.
On Monday, a Spanish cruise passenger became the latest former Hondius traveler to test positive for the virus, which can lie dormant for up to eight weeks.
That case was detected while the infected traveler was quarantining under clinical surveillance at Gómez Ulla Hospital in Madrid, alongside 13 other Spaniards who had been aboard the ship, according to the Spanish Health Ministry.
The patient – who is the second Spanish passenger to contract the virus – was moved to a high-level isolation unit after it was determined that they had been in “close contact” with a sick passenger during the voyage, the ministry said.
Officials stressed that the case poses no risk to the public.
“Health authorities emphasize that the detection of the case has occurred within the already activated isolation and control system, so it does not alter the risk situation for the general population nor change the epidemiological response measures currently in place,” the ministry wrote on X.
Eighteen Americans – including three New Yorkers – on the ill-fated vessel were flown back to the US and quarantined earlier this month, including one who tested positive.
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