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The hantavirus cruise continues to stay on everyone’s mind as many of us prepare for the possibility of experts enforcing mask mandates and quarantine protocols. I don’t think it will come to that, but those who disembarked from a cruise ship that left Argentina last April are being monitored for exposure to a rare strain of the pathogen, which can be transmitted from person to person. Hantavirus “Patient Zero” has been identified as Leo Schilperoord, a 70-year-old Dutch ornithologist who visited a landfill in Argentina, containing rodents potentially carrying the Andes virus strain. pic.twitter.com/6EHWy2RH5u— Interesting AF (@interesting_aIl) May 9, 2026Usually,...

Patient Zero in the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak has been identified as ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, whose passion for birds may have cost him his life. The 70-year-old man and his wife, Mirjam Schilperoord, 69, were on a five-month trip to South America. They first landed in Argentina on Nov. 27, and traveling through Chile, Uruguay and then back to Argentina in late March, where they went on a fateful birdwatching adventure. The couple — from Haulerwijk, a small village of 3,000 people in the Netherlands — were identified in obituaries published in their monthly village magazine. They co-authored a study...

An update, for those of you who are Monitoring the Situation™. About 40 passengers from a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak disembarked on St. Helena, according to Dutch officials. Authorities did not confirm where they are now. https://t.co/LMn08mkjsG— The Associated Press (@AP) May 7, 2026More than two dozen passengers left a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak on April 24 without contact tracing, nearly two weeks after the first passenger died on board, the ship operator and Dutch officials said Thursday. ... The company said Thursday 29 passengers left the vessel at St. Helena, while...

International health officials are trying to track down dozens of passengers who left a cruise ship where a hantavirus outbreak killed three people and sickened several others. They disembarked after the first death, and some have reportedly returned to California. What started as an expedition cruise to Antarctica has now sparked global concerns, as there have been three deaths and five confirmed cases of the hantavirus linked to the MV Hondius ship. Health officials said passengers scattered across the globe before anyone realized the full scope of what was happening on board, and some of those passengers came back home...

An outbreak of hantavirus on board a cruise ship is not the start of a pandemic, the UN health agency has said. Maria van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the World Health Organization (WHO), told a news briefing that it was not the same situation as six years ago with Covid-19, because hantavirus spreads through "close, intimate contact". Health authorities are racing to trace dozens of people who have recently disembarked from the Dutch vessel MV Hondius. On Thursday, the WHO said that overall, five of eight suspected cases of hantavirus had been confirmed. Three people have died, including...

Missing a boarding time for a cruise ship could end up fatal. An 80-year-old Australian woman was discovered dead on a remote island after she was left behind by the cruise ship she was traveling on. The woman was hiking on Lizard Island with a group of other passengers, but was separated from the group after she decided to take some time to rest. The Coral Adventurer cruise ship ended up leaving the woman on the island, but returned several hours later to find her after she was discovered not to be on board. On Sunday, she was discovered dead....

A Turkish court on Thursday charged a Syrian national suspected of plotting to slam speedboats packed with explosives into cruise ships loaded with Israeli tourists, lawyers and police said. According to The AP, defense lawyer Ilhami Sayan said the suspect, identified in the Turkish media as Lu'ai Sakra, was charged with membership in an "illegal organization." He was arrested earlier this month. Police said Sakra was linked to al-Qaeda. "I have no regrets," Sakra shouted to journalists as he was led into the courthouse. "I was going to attack Israeli ships. If they come, my friends will attack them." "I...

The world's largest cruise ship caught fire while docked in Costa Maya, Mexico. Flames hit the Icon of the Seas on Tuesday afternoon, but Royal Caribbean told Cruise Law News that they were "quickly extinguished." At one point, "power failed throughout the ship, impacting elevators, air conditioning, service stations, and cabins," according to Cruise Radio. There were no reported injuries.

The luxury ocean liner Queen Victoria became the center of an unknown outbreak after 129 passengers and 25 crew members were struck by an unidentified gastrointestinal illness, causing symptoms of diarrhea and vomiting during its grand 107-night world voyage. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported earlier this month that the widespread sickness has been ongoing throughout the ship’s journey, which sailed from Southampton, U.K., on January 11 and is set to conclude its voyage there on April 24. The itinerary includes visits to several exotic destinations, including Cape Town, South Africa, and Hong Kong, China. It...

An “unknown” outbreak aboard a cruise ship is spreading, and now 154 people are sickened, said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in an update this week. So far, 25 crew members and 129 passengers on the Carnival-owned Cunard Cruise Line’s Queen Victoria have become ill during the trip, which is up by about 15 cases from when the illnesses were reported earlier in February, according to the CDC. The Queen Victoria cruise has 1,824 passengers and 967 crew members on board, according to the agency. It’s still not clear what’s causing the outbreak on the cruise...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that 135 people were sickened with an “unknown” illness while on board a cruise ship operated by Cunard Line. In an update issued on Jan. 31, the agency said that the predominant symptoms include vomiting and diarrhea, but it said the “causative agents” are “unknown.” Out of about 2,700 passengers and crew, 135 were sickened on Cunard Line’s Queen Victoria, which is on a planned voyage from Jan. 22 to Feb. 12. However, the cases that have been currently reported “do not represent the number of active (symptomatic) gastrointestinal cases at...

The number of reported rapes and sexual assaults on cruises hit a new high in 2023... There were 131 reported incidents in 2023 compared to 87 in 2022 ... But the actual number of incidents is likely much higher... Nationally, two out of three sexual assaults go unreported, ... Earlier this month, MSC Cruises was sued for two alleged sex crimes on separate ships. One lawsuit alleged a crew member raped a passenger, and the other accused the cruise line of failing to protect an underage / 6-year-old girl from being molested . ... Jack Hickey .. cruise companies generally...

Adventure cruise company Hurtigruten Norway today revealed plans for a zero-emissions electric cruise ship with retractable sails covered in solar panels, which is due to set sail in 2030. The company currently has a fleet of eight ships, each with a capacity of 500 passengers, that travel along the Norwegian coast from Oslo to the Arctic Circle. Although a relatively small firm, CEO Hedda Felin hopes that this innovation “can inspire the entire maritime industry.” The project, named “Sea Zero,” was initially announced in March 2022 and since then, Hurtigruten Norway, along with 12 maritime partners and Norway-based research institute...

Last summer, after an elderly passenger died of a heart condition during a Celebrity Cruises vacation to the Caribbean, the cruise line allegedly advised his wife of two options: allow her husband's remains to be removed from the ship in nearby Puerto Rico, where she would have to stay alone for days pending a possible autopsy, or leave his body with the ship's morgue until the vessel arrived back in the United States. In hopes of returning to her family as soon as possible, the woman, 78, chose the latter option, trusting that the ship would safely transport her husband...

Dilek Ertek, 71, was the distributor of Tiffany's jewelry in Turkey for over two decades. After falling from the Norwegian Spirit cruise ship, her family has raised questions surrounding the circumstances — including missing jewelry from her cabin — of her mysterious death. Ertek's son, Gokce Atuk, claims jewelry went missing from his mother's safe in her cabin aboard the cruise ship prior to her unexpected death. The Turkish newspaper, Sabah, has reported that Ertek's family has urged police to investigate the death of the matriarch — specifically her lover, a 74-year-old Swiss national, who waited twenty hours before reporting...

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) says he is “in conversations” with a cruise line to house arriving border crossers and illegal aliens, sent on migrant buses from Texas, on a ship off the coast of the city. Last month, reports circulated that Adams was considering housing thousands of newly arrived border crossers and illegal aliens on a Norwegian cruise line ship as part of a broader effort by the city to deal with a steady flow of migrant buses sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R).

CDC has abandoned ship on cruise restrictions!

A massive unfinished cruise ship is likely to be sold for scrap after its maker declared bankruptcy because no one wants to buy it, the German cruise-industry magazine An Bord first reported. Attempts are being made to sell some of the fixtures and engines from Global Dream II, Christoph Morgen, an insolvency administrator at Brinkmann & Partner, said at a press conference, according to An Bord. After that, the vessel's half-finished keel — complete only in the lower-hull area — will be sold for scrap, Morgen said, according to An Bord.

Dramatic videos emerged on social media Thursday, showing flames and thick black smoke pouring out of the smokestack of a Carnival Cruise ship in the Turks and Caicos. The cruise line confirmed that a part of Carnival Freedom caught fire after the ship docked at Grand Turk. “Carnival Freedom’s emergency response team quickly activated and extinguished a fire inside the ship’s funnel while the ship was in Grand Turk,” company spokesperson Matt Lupoli told The Post in a statement. “All guests and crew are safe, and the ship’s guests were cleared by local authorities to go ashore.”

SEATTLE — Passengers on a Carnival Cruise Ship that docked Tuesday in Seattle say more than 100 people aboard the ship tested positive for COVID-19 and the ship was overwhelmed. Multiple people say they’re in quarantine at Seattle-area hotels after testing positive or being exposed to someone with COVID-19. Carnival Cruise Line would not confirm how many people tested positive, but said there were a number of positive cases, KING5 reported. Darren Sieferston, a passenger on the cruise from Miami to Seattle, is in quarantine after testing positive. He said the crew’s response was chaotic. “They didn’t have enough staff...