4th King County, WA resident being monitored for Andes hantavirus

KING COUNTY, Wash. - A fourth King County resident is being monitored for the Andes hantavirus after it was discovered they were aboard a flight with someone linked to the cruise ship where the outbreak originated.

What we know:

Public Health – Seattle and King County announced Friday that an individual from King County was on a flight from Johannesburg to Amsterdam alongside an infected passenger from the MV Hondius cruise ship.

The sick passenger was removed from the aircraft before takeoff, and the King County resident was not seated near the ill person.

This is the fourth King County resident tied to the cruise ship outbreak investigation. Health officials announced earlier this week they were monitoring three other residents, including two people who sat near a sick cruise ship passenger on a flight, and another who was on board the MV Hondius cruise ship.

TENERIFE, SPAIN - MAY 11: Port vessels accompany the MV Hondius as it departs the Granadilla Port after all passengers were evacuated on May 11, 2026 in Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands, Spain. The cruise ship MV Hondius, which had three passenge

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"Currently, no one in King County has symptoms of Andes type of hantavirus and there are no cases of the Andes type virus in King County. The risk to the public remains low," said Public Health – Seattle and King County in a press release.

Dig deeper:

The hantavirus is typically spread through contact with wild rodents, specifically their urine, dropping and saliva. A Chelan County resident recently tested positive for the more common "Sin Nombre" hantavirus strain, as the state typically sees a few cases each year.

However, the hantavirus strain that spread on the infamous cruise ship was found to be transmissible from human-to-human through prolonged, close contact. But health officials say the current situation is highly manageable and significantly differs from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hantavirus infections can cause diseases like hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (symptoms include fatigue, fever, muscle aches, coughing and shortness of breath) and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (symptoms include headaches, back and stomach pain, fever, chills, nausea, blurred vision, internal bleeding and acute kidney failure).

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What to know about hantavirus as King County, WA residents linked to outbreak

"This is not the next COVID," says a WHO official. But what is hantavirus? The strain of it that the CDC now says is linked to three King County, Washington residents is the Andes virus. FOX 13 looks at stats, medical reviews, and more.

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