An Irish woman who spent six weeks in quarantine following a holiday on a cruise ship hit by a rare hantavirus outbreak said she was surprised she did not contract the deadly virus.Anne Lane (79), from Cork, told RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor Show on Saturday how “very nice” it was to have left the Health Service Executive (HSE) isolation facility behind her after she exited it on Monday.Lane, who turns 80 next month, had been a passenger on the MV Hondius, which was in the Antarctic for several weeks when hantavirus was confirmed. The virus is primarily found in rodents, but can on rare occasions infect humans. The virus claimed the lives of three of Lane’s fellow passengers.Lane, who worked as a personal assistant to former president Mary Robinson for 28 years and more recently for Labour leader Ivana Bacik, said she went on the trip due to her interest in polar climates and had been on six different trips before the last one.However, this particular trip, she said, involved taking the ship from the Antarctic to the Arctic at the end of the Antarctic summer season.“I had always wanted to do it because it covers so many different islands and so many different climates,” she said.Following the outbreak, both she and a travel companion, along with the more than 100 other passengers, were evacuated from Tenerife in Spain once the ship docked there. In full personal protective equipment (PPE), she was repatriated to Ireland on the Irish Government jet to Baldonnel airport.Lane told O’Connor “I still can’t believe how we escaped” without contracting the virus. [ ‘This makes us jump’: How a nature cruise turned into a hantavirus nightmareOpens in new window ]She said she was sure that blood tests taken during quarantine would show she was infected. “I know of at least one case where a fellow passenger contracted it later,” she added.Lane said she was convinced she would contract the virus due to the length of time she had spent with the ship’s doctor, before he himself became ill.“I said to my travelling companion, you know we’re going to get it because we have spent so much time in the doctor’s company. So I thought, it’s inevitable.”“I know that when you say, like, three people died ... and that sounds small, but it would be if it was a big cruise ship with 1,500 people, but this was a very small ship. Its maximum passengers was 160. We never had more than about 130 plus the staff,” she said.Lane pointed out she has no complaints about the HSE centre where she had to isolate and described it as “absolutely amazing and very comfortable”.“There are apartments and you’re put into an apartment. You have everything you need there, every basic thing you need, and three meals are brought to you every day. And then we had blood tests every week, because for the first two weeks there, I still believed we would get it,” she said. “It’s one of those places you never hear about until you need it, and we needed it,” Lane added.She has not ruled out returning to Antarctica again – perhaps even next year.The travel company she took the trip with was “very, very good” and could not have handled the situation any better, she said.“They were on top of it all the time. The captain was absolutely amazing – and the expedition leader. And I would trust them again with my life,” she said.