Why the long incubation period of hantavirus could make tracing its spread difficult – CTV
May 05, 2026
A rare virus that has killed three people on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean can carry an incubation period of more than four weeks, complicating efforts to trace its spread, an infectious disease specialist says.
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, who works at Toronto General Hospital, tells CP24 that people can develop symptoms anywhere from one week to four weeks after being exposed to hantavirus.
That lengthy incubation period, he says, could make it challenging to determine whether there was person-to-person transmission of the largely rodent borne virus onboard the MV Hondius or whether those who have been sickened were exposed to the virus prior to the ship departing Argentina for Antarctica.
“The key point here is we don’t know yet and they have to conduct their investigations,” he said. “The issue with hantavirus is it has quite a long incubation period. It can be one week to even north of four weeks so it might have been acquired on land in Argentina and people just got sick at different times because of the incubation period or possibly people got sick on the cruise ship and then perhaps transmitted it to other people on the cruise ship.”
