Three people have died and at least three others have fallen ill aboard the MV Hondius, a Dutch-flagged expedition cruise ship currently anchored off Praia, the capital of Cape Verde. The vessel departed from Ushuaia, Argentina, more than a month ago and made stops in Antarctica before heading north across the Atlantic.
Safronetz says clusters of hantavirus cases aren’t uncommon and occur more frequently in places like South America, where large numbers of rodents live in close proximity to humans.
He says it isn’t yet clear how the virus got aboard the Hondius.
“Somehow the virus was introduced to the cruise ship,” he said, noting it could have been a person who was infected before boarding and passed it on to other passengers, or rodents may have contaminated a food source.
David Safronetz is the chief of special pathogens at the Public Health Agency of Canada. (University of Manitoba Faculty of Science)
He says the only hantaviruses known to cause human-to-human transmission originates from South America – more specifically, Argentina, where the cruise ship departed from.
The Selenium Link: Some researchers have noted that hantavirus incidence in humans can be significantly higher—up to six times higher—in regions with severe selenium deficiency, as seen in studies from China.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4306842/>
