The hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship, meant to travel from Argentina to Cape Verde, has become a growing concern among Canadians, as three Canadians are currently isolating after being potentially exposed to the virus.
Four other Canadians remain on board the ship in quarantine, with consular officials expected to meet with them on Friday.
Three people on board the cruise ship have died, with the World Health Organization (WHO) currently conducting an investigation.
The latest outbreak raises the question: how does hantavirus compare with other viruses that have posed major public health challenges?
Hantavirus usually spreads by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and, in rare cases, can be transmitted from person to person, according to the WHO.
Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
There is no specific treatment or cure for hantavirus, but early medical attention can increase the chance of survival.
Hantavirus also doesn’t spread the same way as COVID-19, according to Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness.
“Most hantaviruses don’t transmit between people at all. Most hantaviruses are transmitted from rodents or their feces or their saliva in their droppings to people. And only this one particular virus, the Andes virus, which has been identified here, we’ve seen some human-to-human transmission,” Kerkhove said, speaking at a press conference on Thursday.
“This is not COVID, this is not influenza; it spreads very, very differently.”
As many might recall from the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the ways officials measure a virus’s contagiousness is by looking at its reproduction number, which represents the average number of people who become infected by an infectious person.
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If a virus’s reproduction number is above one, the virus will spread more quickly.
If it is below one, the virus will stop spreading.
Currently, the reproduction number for the Andes strain of hantavirus on the affected cruise ship isn’t clear, but officials say its capacity to spread is low.
According to Health Canada, between 150,000 and 200,000 cases of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome due to a hantavirus infection occur each year worldwide.
About 200 cases of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome occur each year, primarily in North and South America. The average case fatality rate is 40 per cent.
The coronavirus that fuelled the COVID-19 pandemic typically had a reproduction rate of between one and four, officials said in 2021.
That meant one person infected would typically infect between one and four others.
The fatality rate of COVID-19 varies by country, but in Canada, it hovers around 1.1 per cent, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Centre.
When asked if the hantavirus outbreak is comparable to the “early days or weeks of the pandemic,” Kerkhove said, “this is not coronavirus.”
“This is a very different virus. We know this virus. Hantavirus has been around for quite a while. There’s a lot of detail that we know,” she said on Thursday at a press conference.
“I want to be unequivocal here: this is not SARS-CoV-2. This is not the start of a COVID pandemic. This is an outbreak that we see on a ship.”
According to the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases, Canada’s estimated reproduction number for measles sits between 12 and 18.
This means that each person infected with measles will, on average, infect 12 to 18 other people within a susceptible population.
However, a Lancet review found that the reproductive number for measles was “much more variable than this,” ranging from 1.5 to 770.
UChicago Medicine states that typically, three in 1,000 people who contract measles will die.
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) has a reproduction number of between one and five, according to a 2023 study.
That means an infected person will typically infect one to five other people.
A 2022 Lancet study states that the fatality rate of RSV is the highest with full-term infants (53.7 per cent), primarily those between one and four months of age (63.8 per cent).
A February 2026 statement from the WHO says the answer is “yes and no” when evaluating if the world is better prepared for the next pandemic.
“In many ways, the world is better prepared because meaningful, concrete steps have been taken to strengthen preparedness,” the statement reads.
“However, at the same time, no, because the progress made is fragile and uneven, and more still needs to be done to keep humanity safe.”
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
