2 New Jersey residents monitored for potential hantavirus exposure

Two New Jersey residents are being monitored for potential exposure to hantavirus after contact with an infected individual who had recently traveled on the cruise ship MV Hondius, state officials said Thursday.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill said on US social media company X that the state Department of Health was notified by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that the possible exposure occurred after the infected person disembarked from the cruise ship and during international air travel.

“The residents were not passengers on the ship, and the potential exposure occurred during air travel abroad,” Sherrill said in a statement posted on social media.

“Both individuals are being monitored in coordination with local health officials and are not currently showing symptoms,” she added.

Sherrill noted that the risk to the public “remains very low” and there are no confirmed cases of hantavirus in New Jersey.

The development comes amid an international investigation into a hantavirus outbreak linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship, during which at least three deaths have been reported.

The MV Hondius, carrying approximately 150 passengers and crew from 23 nationalities, departed from Argentina and crossed the Atlantic before reporting a cluster of respiratory illnesses while sailing off Cape Verde.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the first confirmed cases had traveled through Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay before boarding the ship, including visits to bird-watching areas inhabited by rodents known to carry the Andes virus.

The WHO has informed 12 countries whose nationals disembarked earlier in Saint Helena: Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, the UK, and the US.