Two Singapore residents who were on board MV Hondius test negative for hantavirus infection
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Both the residents who were on board the MV Hondius cruise ship are currently in isolation.
PHOTO: ST FILE
SINGAPORE - Two Singapore residents who were on board the MV Hondius cruise ship have tested negative for hantavirus infection, including the Andes hantavirus responsible for an outbreak on the ship, which remains the only hantavirus species known to be transmissible from human to human.
The Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA) announced the test results on May 8, a day after it said the 67-year-old Singaporean and the 65-year-old Singapore permanent resident were currently in isolation at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases.
The first man returned to Singapore on May 2 and the second on May 6. Both disembarked from the ship before the outbreak was detected, and were on the same flight as a passenger who was ill and later died.
CDA said that, as a precaution, both will be quarantined for 30 days from the date of their last exposure, as most hantavirus cases are expected to show signs of infection within this period.
They will be tested again before being released from quarantine. For the rest of the 45-day monitoring period, they will be monitored through phone surveillance.
Both men were on board MV Hondius when it left the Argentinian port of Ushuaia on April 1.
They were among the 30 passengers who got off the ship at Saint Helena Island on April 24. On April 25, they took a flight which carried 88 passengers to the South African city of Johannesburg.
There was a woman on that same flight who later died and was subsequently confirmed to have been infected with hantavirus.
The information that a Singaporean had disembarked at St Helena was conveyed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a media briefing on May 7 that WHO had informed the 12 countries whose nationals had disembarked in Saint Helena, including Singapore.
The ship’s operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, declined to provide additional information on the passengers. The company said on May 7 it was confirming the details of all passengers and crew who embarked and disembarked at various stops since March 20. It told ST it is currently unable to confirm if there were other Singaporeans on board, as some passengers’ nationalities were unknown.
Dr Tedros said it is possible that more cases may be reported, given the incubation period of the Andes virus.
Symptoms of infection typically include fever, body aches, fatigue, gastrointestinal symptoms and difficulty breathing. The illness can progress rapidly to shock and death, CDA said.
However, there is virtually no risk to the larger population and “we should lead our lives normally”, said Professor Hsu Li Yang, director of the Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS), a think-tank that collaborates with regional universities and government agencies to build resilience against emerging infectious diseases.
Human hantavirus infections are not uncommon in some Asian countries and Singapore is also no stranger to hantaviruses, having reported a handful cases since the 1970s.
Details of the latest case diagnosed in 2022 were reported in a 2024 letter to the editor of the Annals, an academic journal published by the Academy of Medicine, Singapore.
Professor Hsu Li Yang, director of the Asia Centre for Health Security, said there is virtually no risk of the hantavirus spreading to the larger population in Singapore.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF PROFESSOR HSU LI YANG
The patient was a Malaysian man who travelled between Singapore and Ipoh. He would frequently drink cow urine as part of his religious and cultural practice, which could have been contaminated with rodent droppings carrying the virus, and hence likely the source of infection.
However, the various hantavirus species circulating in Asia differ from those in the Americas, said Prof Hsu.
The Andes virus typically found in parts of South America, which was the species that hit the cruise ship, is the only one known to be capable of limited transmission between humans, said WHO.
Other human hantavirus infections are caused by exposure to the saliva, urine or droppings of infected rodents.
Prof Hsu, who is also an infectious diseases expert at the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, said that the Andes virus has not been found in the rodent species in Asia.
In a well-studied Andes virus outbreak in Argentina in 2018, where human-to-human transmission was documented, people were infected only by symptomatic and not asymptomatic individuals, he added.
WHO has said that between less than 1 per cent and 15 per cent of people infected with the hantavirus in Asia and Europe will die.
However, the fatality rate of the Andes virus is reported to be as high as 30 per cent to 50 per cent, which makes it the most dangerous hantavirus infection, as well as one of the most lethal viral infections in general, said Prof Hsu.
