Daily Mail57%
Panic over SIX Americans who returned to US from deadly rat virus ship... as health officials scramble to find infected all over the world 58%
By Rachel Bowman0%
5/7/2026, 12:58:03 PM
Topics: California
Keywords: Dailymail, California
BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Post Hoc (False Cause), Availability Heuristic, and Pessimism Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 29.2% saturation with 221 hits. Analysis detected 1,582 faulty-reasoning hits from 757 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 54.8% and a BS Rank of 58% (7,114 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 57.70% of the article peer group.
Several American tourists who left a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak are being monitored in three states after it was revealed that dozens of passengers disembarked from the boat without contact tracing.
Six Americans left the luxury cruise ship on April 24 on the island of St Helena, 13 days following the first death on board, cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions revealed on Thursday.
While those remaining on the vessel are following strict hygiene and isolation measure, health officials are working to track down those who may be carrying the rare, rat-borne illness that has a 40 percent mortality rate.
On Monday, Oceanwide said there were 17 Americans on board.
The CDC said in a statement Wednesday night that both it and the State Department were closely monitoring the status of Americans who had been on the ship.
'The Department of State is leading a coordinated, whole-of-government response including direct contact with passengers, diplomatic coordination, and engagement with domestic and international health authorities,' the CDC said
Officials have confirmed that two people in Georgia, one person in Arizona and an unspecified number of people in California are being monitored.
The Georgia Department of Public Health confirmed the agency was monitoring two residents, but did not specify what part of the statement they reside, or how long they will be monitored.
'The individuals are currently in good health and show no signs of infection.
They are following current recommendations from CDC,' the agency said a statement to USA Today.
In California, the Department of Public Health said it was alerted by the CDC about residents who were on board, but did not disclose how many.
Hantavirus usually spreads by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and may be transmitted from person to person, though that is rare, according to the World Health Organization, whose top epidemic expert said the risk to the public is low.
Tests have confirmed that at least five people who were on the ship were infected with a hantavirus found in South America, called the Andes virus.
It can cause a severe and often fatal lung disease called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.
The Andes strain is the only hantavirus known to spread from human to human.
The deadly outbreak that has wreaked havoc aboard the cruise ship and left three people dead is believed to have originated in a seagull-plagued rubbish tip, in an Argentinian town known as 'the end of the world'.
The Argentine government's leading hypothesis is that a Dutch couple who died contracted the virus during a bird-watching outing at a garbage dump in Ushuaia before boarding the vessel.
Three people, including the ship’s doctor, were evacuated Wednesday while the ship was near the West African island country of Cape Verde and taken to Europe for treatment.
The body of the third fatality, a German woman, is still on board the ship after she died on May 2.
The evacuation of the remaining 146 passengers has been delayed, after the president of the Canaries refused to let the ship dock at the archipelago for fear of contaminating the civilian population.
It comes as a guest still stuck on the MV Hondius has revealed that social distancing has only been in place for three days, with staff organizing a 'big barbecue as if nothing had happened', despite the deadly rat-borne virus.
It emerged Wednesday that a man tested positive for hantavirus in Switzerland after he also disembarked at St.
Helena and flew home, though his precise movements aren’t clear.
A stewardess on a flight that a hantavirus-infected cruise passenger tried to board before dying a day later is now feared to have caught the fatal disease.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is attempting to locate at least 69 people who may have come into contact with the 69-year-old Dutch woman, who boarded two flights before she died of the virus in South Africa on April 26.
A Frenchman is believed to have had contact with the former passenger on the Airlink flight from St Helena to Johannesburg on April 25, and is being monitored by health authorities.
The woman then boarded a second flight to Amsterdam, but was prevented from flying after the crew grew concerned at how ill she appeared.
Now, a Dutch flight attendant with 'mild symptoms' has been hospitalized due to possible hantavirus, following contact with the passenger who passed away a day later.
Analysis
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