Overview
- Laboratory tests by the Rijksdienst and Erasmus MC detected hantavirus in a crew member who had close contact with sick people aboard the cruise ship Hondius, and the patient was moved from home quarantine into hospital isolation as a precaution.
- The infected person is a member of the Hondius crew, tying the onshore case to the ship that earlier drew international attention for virus cases among passengers.
- GGD Rotterdam-Rijnmond has placed 23 people under supervised quarantine after the ship arrived in Rotterdam; all have tested negative so far but remain under observation because of the virus’s incubation period.
- RIVM and local GGD teams are conducting contact tracing, may require household members to quarantine, and are withholding the patient’s location and personal details to protect privacy and manage public-health risk.
- Authorities perform weekly tests on people in quarantine and say they will continue monitoring contacts closely, which could affect quarantine duration, local testing capacity and port support operations while investigations continue.