A timeline of the outbreak
Here’s a breakdown of what we know so far about how the outbreak unfolded.
April 1: The MV Hondius sets sail from southern Argentina with 114 people on board.
April 6: A 70-year-old Dutch man falls ill with fever, headache and diarrhea, health officials say.
April 11: The man dies on board after developing respiratory distress. At the time, the ship was between the British island territories of South Georgia and St. Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic, according to data from the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic.
April 24: The ship stops at St. Helena, where the body of the man is removed and his 69-year-old wife disembarks. The ship’s operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, said 30 passengers in total — including the man who died — left the ship at that time, including two Canadians.
April 26: The wife of the first victim dies in hospital after collapsing at an airport in South Africa the day before.
Another passenger, a British man, becomes sick on the ship after it leaves St. Helena. The next day, after the ship docks at Ascension Island, he is evacuated to South Africa, where he remains in intensive care.
May 2: A third person, a German woman, dies on board the ship four days after falling ill with signs of pneumonia. The same day, health officials confirm hantavirus in the British man.
May 3: The WHO announces it is investigating a suspected hantavirus outbreak on the ship.
May 7: Five of the eight suspected cases of hantavirus have been confirmed, WHO says.
In a joint statement, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand and Health Minister Marjorie Michel confirm the two Canadians on the cruise ship are now back home, as is another who wasn’t on the vessel but may have come into contact with a symptomatic individual.
“All three are asymptomatic, have received guidance to self-isolate, and are being monitored by local authorities for the development of symptoms,” the ministers said.
