OTTAWA — A Canadian passenger who disembarked from a cruise ship at the center of a hantavirus outbreak has tested positive for the disease, health authorities confirmed Saturday, marking what officials described as the first confirmed case linked to the vessel among passengers from Canada. The individual, whose identity was not disclosed under federal privacy regulations, is currently receiving treatment at a hospital in British Columbia and is listed in serious but stable condition, according to provincial health officials who briefed reporters Saturday afternoon.
The cruise ship, the MV Aldebaran Star, has been docked under quarantine at the Port of Vancouver since Wednesday after crew members reported a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses consistent with hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. Three crew members, all citizens of a Central American nation, died after falling ill during the voyage, which departed from the port of Valparaíso, Chile, eleven days before the vessel arrived at its Canadian destination, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. Two additional crew members remained hospitalized in Vancouver in critical condition as of Saturday evening.
Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome is a rare but often fatal respiratory disease caused by hantaviruses, which are typically transmitted to humans through contact with infected rodents or their droppings, urine, or nesting materials. The disease progresses rapidly once symptoms appear, often moving from fever and muscle aches to severe respiratory distress within days. Person-to-person transmission is considered extremely rare for the variants most commonly documented in North America, a distinction health officials were careful to emphasize at a news conference Saturday afternoon, though they noted that a variant documented in parts of South America does carry a limited capacity for human-to-human spread.
Canadian health officials said they have been in contact with the roughly 340 passengers who were aboard the vessel for the duration of the voyage, 87 of whom are Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Of those 87, some 62 have undergone testing or detailed clinical screening, with the remainder either awaiting results or having been assessed and cleared based on symptom screening protocols. Authorities in Chile and Argentina, where the ship made port calls during its itinerary, have been notified and have begun their own contact-tracing and passenger-notification efforts. The shipping company provided manifests and contact details to health agencies in all affected jurisdictions, a Canadian official said.
Dr. Amara Singh, the Public Health Agency’s deputy chief public health officer, told reporters that the risk to the broader public remained low based on current evidence. She said the agency’s working theory was that an exposure pathway had existed on board the vessel, possibly through rodent infestation in cargo holds or below-deck areas, and that investigators were attempting to identify the precise route by which crew members and potentially passengers came into contact with the pathogen. She said the agency would expand testing to all passengers if the number of confirmed cases rose.
Epidemiologists not involved in the official investigation said the outbreak’s apparent emergence aboard a single vessel, with multiple severe cases over a short period, was an unusual presentation for a disease more commonly associated with rural or agricultural settings. Dr. Rafael Estevez, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto, said the working hypothesis of rodent infestation in cargo or below-deck areas was scientifically plausible, and that passengers who entered those areas or, in some older vessels, lower-deck cabins, could theoretically have encountered contaminated surfaces or disturbed nesting material. He cautioned, however, that the investigation was still at an early stage and that firm conclusions about the exposure pathway would require environmental sampling results not yet available.
The shipping company that operates the Aldebaran Star, Meridian Voyages International, issued a statement Saturday expressing condolences to the families of the deceased crew members and pledging full cooperation with health authorities in Canada, Chile and Argentina. The company said it was retaining an independent environmental health firm to conduct a thorough inspection of the vessel and that it had proactively notified all passengers from prior voyages in the preceding three months as a precautionary measure. Canada’s federal transportation ministry said the ship would remain under quarantine until inspectors completed their assessment, with no timeline yet provided for when passengers who remained voluntarily aboard or nearby might be cleared to return home. Provincial health officers in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario said they were prepared to scale testing capacity rapidly if warranted.