France’s Pasteur Institute has fully sequenced the Andes virus found in a French passenger from the MV Hondius cruise ship.

Most hantaviruses are not known to spread between people. Andes virus is the exception. After the initial spillover from infected rodents, it is the only hantavirus with well-documented person-to-person transmission.

In 2018, health authorities in southern Argentina were scrambling, trying to understand what had caused nearly three dozen people in the tiny village of Epuyen to fall gravely ill. By the end of the outbreak,

Andes hantavirus was first identified in Argentina in 1995 after outbreaks of severe respiratory illness in the Andes mountain region of South America. The virus is still mainly associated with Argentina and Chile, though international travel can spread the virus beyond those regions.

The hantavirus from the MV Hondius outbreak has been sequenced from samples taken from one of the infected individuals. The results confirm that it is the Andes strain, the most virulent and contagious,

A Canadian traveller has tested positive for hantavirus after departing from a cruise ship linked to an outbreak. Health officials clarified that while the situation is concerning, hantavirus poses different risks compared to respiratory viruses like Covid-19,

Officials say proper contract tracing and isolation efforts can stop the hantavirus outbreak from becoming a “large epidemic.”

World health officials say the Andes form of hantavirus, which can jump between humans, is not spiraling into a pandemic.