Dutch health officials clear hantavirus ship to sail again

A cruise ship which sparked a global health alert over a deadly outbreak of hantavirus was on Saturday cleared to put to sea again after cleaning and disinfection.

“From a public health perspective, there are no longer any obstacles to putting the Hondius back to sea,” the public health agency in the Dutch port of Rotterdam said following a final inspection on Friday.

During the checks, infection control experts “determined that the Hondius had been cleaned effectively and that disinfection had been carried out in accordance with established guidelines,” a statement said.

The owner of the MV Hondius, Oceanwide Expeditions, this week said that the Hondius would leave Rotterdam once inspections were complete, and that it would resume its cruise schedule from June 13.

The Hondius was sailing from Ushuaia in Argentina to Cape Verde when its journey was disrupted after three passengers died following the hantavirus outbreak. Some passengers had left the ship at the island of St Helena before the alert was raised.

Hantavirus is a rare virus spread by rodents for which no vaccines or specific treatments exist.

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Most passengers were taken off the ship on Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands, then flown back to their home countries.

The Dutch-flagged ship arrived on May 18 in Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, where the remainder of its crew was placed in quarantine.

The World Health Organization has to date recorded 13 confirmed cases linked to the outbreak, including the three people who died.