French police on motocycles ride past SAMU emergency medical service employees preparing for the arrival of a plane repatriating French passengers of the MV Hondius, at Paris Le Bourget airport, on May 10, 2026. XAVIER GALIANA/AFP
A French woman repatriated from a cruise ship struck by hantavirus has tested positive with the rare disease, France's health minister said Monday, May 11. The woman, one of five French passengers flown back from the MV Hondius and placed in isolation in Paris, started to feel very unwell on Sunday night and "tests came back positive," Health Minister Stéphanie Rist told the France Inter radio broadcaster.
"Of the five French nationals, one person developed symptoms during the journey" and her condition "deteriorated overnight," after which "the tests came back positive for hantavirus," said Rist, adding that the patient was in a specialist infectious diseases hospital.
Twenty-two more French nationals had been identified as contact cases after being exposed to someone with the virus, Rist added. They included eight people who had travelled on an April 25 flight between Saint Helena and Johannesburg, and 14 more on a flight between Johannesburg and Amsterdam, she said.
