South African health authorities have swiftly identified, isolated and begun contact‑tracing a cluster of Hantavirus infections linked to a cruise ship that called at the country’s ports in early April. Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi briefed Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Health on Wednesday, confirming three confirmed cases and outlining the ongoing response.
The first case involved a critically ill British national who was diagnosed with Hantavirus after being admitted to a Johannesburg hospital. The second patient, a woman who collapsed at OR Tambo International Airport, later died in South Africa. Her husband, the third confirmed case, died on St Helena. All three were passengers on the MV Hondius, which sailed from Argentina to the Canary Islands via Cape Verde.
Contact tracing has identified 62 individuals who may have been exposed, of whom 42 are already under observation. Tracing efforts have focused on three groups: airport staff and passengers present at OR Tambo when the woman collapsed; health‑care workers at the Kempton Park hospital where she was treated; and the ambulance crew and medical team that cared for the patient air‑lifted to a private facility in Sandton. The fourth cluster includes a patient evacuated from Ascension Island to the same Sandton hospital.
The World Health Organization is assisting with international tracing. The minister explained that the woman did not report any symptoms to airline staff in St Helena, so routine temperature screening at the airport did not flag her as a risk. “Our screening systems functioned as designed; they cannot detect every infection,” Motsoaledi said.
Laboratory analysis identified the Andes strain of Hantavirus, one of 38 known strains and the only one documented to transmit between humans. Transmission requires very close contact, which explains why the first two deaths were a married couple. The virus is zoonotic, normally spread from rodents to humans in the Americas, and has not been reported in African rodent populations.
Professor Lucille Blumberg, an infectious‑disease specialist at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), highlighted the speed of the national response. “We confirmed the virus within 24 hours of receiving an alert from international colleagues,” she said. “Within 12 hours we convened an emergency call with partners and began extensive contact monitoring, even before the pathogen was fully identified.”
Blumberg added that the incubation period for Hantavirus can be lengthy, necessitating continued observation of identified contacts. She noted ongoing collaboration with South‑American experts and WHO‑coordinated laboratory support, describing the effort as “extraordinary” given the unusual setting.
The Ministry of Health will maintain surveillance of the identified contacts and keep the public informed of any further developments. The rapid detection and coordinated response underscore South Africa’s capacity to manage emerging infectious threats, even those previously unseen on the continent.
