Australian Health Minister Mark Butler said on Thursday that the quarantine period for passengers from the Hondius, the cruise ship that was afflicted by a hantavirus outbreak in April, will be extended from June 5 to June 23.
Butler said the decision to extend the quarantine was based on advice from the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) and “our own health officials.”
“The incubation period for hantavirus can be up to 42 days, so World Health Organization advice is that quarantine arrangements remain in place of some type or another for those 42 days,” he said, without explaining why the quarantine period was originally for only half that length of time.
Butler said the decision to go with 42 days instead of 21 was partly based on “two additional reports of hantavirus infections connected with this cruise ship.”
“On the weekend, a crew member from the cruise ship in the Netherlands tested positive, and only in the last day or so a passenger from a cruise ship in Spain has also tested positive, confirming that the risk of transmission of this after disembarkation has not passed,” he said.
“The passengers have been informed about the advice and the decision of government. I’m happy to say they remain well. They’ve only been tested again in the last 24 or 36 hours or so, and all six have again tested negative,” he added.
The six passengers quarantined in Australia include four Australian citizens, one permanent resident, and a resident of New Zealand. They have been kept in the National Resilience Facility at Bullsbrook, near the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base in Perth, since they were repatriated from the Canary Islands on May 15.
The facility, also known as the Center for National Resilience, is a 500-bed quarantine complex that was constructed during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, and has been little-used since it was completed in 2022.
The $400 million center has been criticized as a wasteful project commissioned in a panic during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, with only one brief spell of productive use when people evacuated from brushfires in 2023 were housed there. It has also been used for police training exercises, and before the six hantavirus cruise passengers arrived there was talk of converting it into a prison.
The hantavirus outbreak aboard the Hondius was briefly the subject of intense global concern since the disease can be deadly, and the strain involved was the only known hantavirus variant that spreads through human contact.
As of Wednesday, W.H.O. officially counted 11 confirmed and two probable cases from the outbreak with a total of three fatalities. Only two of the deaths were confirmed to have been infected by the hantavirus.
The two additional infections mentioned by Butler included one Hondius crew member and one passenger who tested positive in the Netherlands and Spain, respectively. There have been no confirmed cases of hantavirus transmission outside the Hondius passengers and crew.