Native News
The Hanta Virus Takes a Cruise
Guest Opinion
Cruise ships are enclosed environments with high-density human populations and weeks of exposure. Add to that their worldwide or regional contact with cities, giving hours of exposure to any virus or bacteria that can be collected from a range of ports over increments of time. This real-life experiment has created a specialty area of study.
Galveston is a major port for cruise ship embarkations and debarkations, and as such, it has attracted researchers who specialize in cruise ship viruses and bacteria to the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). This has helped us understand that the frequent outbreaks of sickness on cruise ships have largely been due to norovirus.
One virus that would not have been considered a likely cruise ship virus is hantavirus. Its form in the United States is zoonotic; that is, it is transmitted from animals to humans. The respiratory infection also has a high mortality rate — up to 50% of those infected with the Americas strain will die.
The first patient diagnosed turned out to have a hantavirus strain that is communicable from human to human, explaining why a number of people — though the exact number remains unclear — became infected. Further, the cruise ship, named the MV Hondius, departed from Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1, 2026, with more than 140 passengers, from a region where this strain of the virus (Andes) is endemic. As of May 8, 2026, three people had died, consistent with the virus’s high mortality rate.
Previous Investigations of Hantavirus
The first diagnosed outbreak of hantavirus in the United States began as a “mystery illness.” A person would show symptoms of respiratory distress, and three days later they would be dead. No one knew what the disease was, and it was causing panic. The outbreak occurred in the Four Corners region on the Navajo Nation reservation. It was reported as the “Navajo disease” by at least one news outlet, and some stores in the region banned Navajo people from entering. You might guess this happened in 1860, but no — it happened in 1993.
The CDC sent a team of epidemiologists to investigate the mystery disease but were stumped as to what was killing people. It was not until Elders were consulted that investigators learned the community already had knowledge about where it came from.
It had been a wet spring following several years of drought, and the pinyon nuts were especially plentiful. Deer mice eat pinyon nuts, so the deer mouse population exploded, increasing the chances of human exposure. The young couple who were the first victims of the virus had gone to a cabin where they were exposed to deer mouse droppings.
There is a reason Elders say that if you see a mouse run across your clothing, you should burn the clothes. When mice are frightened, they often urinate, contaminating clothing with hantavirus, which is spread through feces and urine. Dr. Lori Alvord, the first Navajo surgeon, explained this entire case in her book The Scalpel and the Silver Bear. She shares traditions such as burning clothes and other forms of knowledge related to outbreaks.
When epidemiologists and public health officials met with Navajo Elders, drawing on Navajo oral history, the Elders described two previous occasions when an unknown disease had emerged and killed community members: 1918 and 1933. In each of those years, unusually wet springs had preceded the outbreaks, and the wet conditions produced abundant pinyon nut growth. According to Navajo tradition, mice inhabit the nocturnal and outdoor world while humans inhabit the daytime and indoor world, and the two should not mix or sickness and death may occur.
What this traditional knowledge did was answer the ecological and predictive question: what conditions produce these outbreaks? The Elders noted comparable deaths recounted in oral history, observing that similar disease presentations occurred after periods of “excess” — years of excess rain, excess vegetation, and consequently excess rodents. This critical information guided scientists to investigate rodent-borne infections. The virus was ultimately isolated and identified by scientists, but it was the combination of these two scientific worldviews that solved the “mystery disease.”
The case is an example of why ecological surveillance matters and why long-memory community knowledge is a legitimate scientific resource alongside biomedical investigation.
Meanwhile in Argentina
Argentine government officials have said that the Andes hantavirus strain has not previously been found in the port city where the cruise ship originated. However, there is evidence from distribution maps that the strain may simply be less common there than in other regions. (Ushuaia is located at the southern tip of Argentina.)
The World Health Organization should send anthropologists, not just epidemiologists, to Argentina and, if they have not already done so, begin talking with Elders from Indigenous tribes and communities there. If we learned anything from the Navajo Nation investigation of hantavirus, it is that all forms of knowledge can help solve problems that might otherwise remain mysteries. While the virus has been identified, patient zero has not been identified, nor has the route of infection that appears to have originated in Argentina with the Andes strain. Learning the ecological conditions that increased the risk of exposure to the Andes strain would be invaluable.
To read more articles by Professor Sutton go to: https://profvictoria.substack.com/
Professor Victoria Sutton (Lumbee) is a law professor on the faculty of Texas Tech University. In 2005, Sutton became a founding member of the National Congress of American Indians, Policy Advisory Board to the NCAI Policy Center, positioning the Native American community to act and lead on policy issues affecting Indigenous communities in the United States.