What Happened on the Hantavirus Cruise, According to a Doctor on Board
汉坦病毒邮轮上究竟发生了什么？一位船上医生的亲历
A passenger helped manage the outbreak after the ship’s doctor on the MV Hondius fell ill.
MV “洪迪乌斯”号船医病倒后，一名乘客挺身而出，接手疫情应对工作。
Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Celmins, Vija / The Art Institute of Chicago / Lannan Foundation; Bridgeman Images.
插图：《大西洋月刊》。图片来源：Celmins, Vija / 芝加哥艺术博物馆 / Lannan基金会；Bridgeman Images。
May 7, 2026, 5:27 PM ET
2026年5月7日 美东时间下午5:27
When Stephen Kornfeld set sail aboard the MV Hondius in early April, his grand plan for the cruise was to add as many new species as possible to his birding list. A medical oncologist based in Bend, Oregon, Kornfeld is also an avid birder—second on eBird’s renowned rankings of birders worldwide—and the ship would visit several remote islands, where he might spot some of the globe’s most obscure avians. But last week, Kornfeld’s trip took an unexpected twist: He stepped in to care for three people thought to be sick with hantavirus, a severe respiratory pathogen that can kill roughly half of the people it infects. Kornfeld was, and still is, “a passenger on this boat,” he told me. “But I became the doctor on this boat.”
四月初，斯蒂芬·科恩菲尔德登上MV“洪迪乌斯”号时，他对这趟航行的全部期待，就是尽可能多地在自己的观鸟名录上添上几个新物种。科恩菲尔德是俄勒冈州本德市的一名肿瘤内科医生，同时也是一位狂热的观鸟爱好者——在全球知名的eBird观鸟排行榜上位列第二。这艘船将造访数座偏远岛屿，他或许有机会一睹地球上最罕见的鸟类真容。然而上周，旅程出现了意想不到的转折：他临时接手救治了三名疑似感染汉坦病毒的患者——这是一种致死率高达约50%的严重呼吸道病原体。科恩菲尔德过去是、现在仍然是“这艘船上的一名乘客”，他对我说，“但我变成了这艘船上的医生。”
Since the MV Hondius departed, at least eight people have come down with suspected or confirmed cases of hantavirus; three have died. People typically get infected by the virus via the aerosolized feces or other bodily secretions of infected rodents. But the World Health Organization has confirmed that this hantavirus is a species called Andes virus, which has sometimes spread person to person, under conditions of close and prolonged contact—such as, say, on a cruise ship with about 150 people on board.
自“洪迪乌斯”号起航以来，已有至少八人出现汉坦病毒疑似或确诊症状，其中三人死亡。人类感染该病毒的典型途径是吸入受感染啮齿类动物的气溶化粪便或其他体液分泌物。但世界卫生组织已确认，此次涉及的病毒为汉坦病毒属中的安第斯病毒，该病毒此前有过人际传播的记录——前提是密切且持续的接触，比如说，在一艘载有约150人的邮轮上。
A month ago, as the cruise departed from Argentina, Kornfeld and the other passengers—among them, dozens of birders—were buzzing about the whales, seals, and dolphins they’d spotted cavorting in the South Atlantic Ocean, and gossiping about the adventures ahead. When a 70-year-old Dutch man, one of the birders, died aboard on April 11, Kornfeld and the others were shaken but considered the incident a freak accident, with no implications for anyone else on board. But then, roughly two weeks later, the Dutch man’s wife fell sick, too, dying shortly after she was taken off the ship. After another birder, a British man, grew feverish and began struggling to breathe, he was evacuated to a South African ICU, where he remains in care.
一个月前，邮轮从阿根廷启航时，科恩菲尔德和其他乘客——其中不乏数十位观鸟者——还在兴奋地谈论着南大西洋上嬉戏的鲸鱼、海豹和海豚，对即将到来的冒险充满期待。4月11日，一位70岁的荷兰男子——也是船上的观鸟者之一——在船上去世。科恩菲尔德和其他人虽然深受震动，但当时认为这只是一起突发的个案，与他人无关。然而大约两周后，这位荷兰男子的妻子也病倒了，在被转移下船后不久即告不治。紧接着，另一位英国籍观鸟者开始发烧并出现呼吸困难，随后被紧急撤离至南非一家重症监护室，目前仍在接受治疗。
By the end of April, three other people on board had started to feel quite ill—including two crew members, among them the ship’s doctor, who had been assessing the other patients. Many people on the ship’s small crew were trained to provide some degree of medical support. But there was no official backup physician, Kornfeld said, and when the crew started asking who among the passengers had a medical background, few were able to help.
四月底，船上又有三人明显感到不适——其中包括两名船员，而其中之一正是此前一直在为其他患者做评估的船医。船上的小型船员团队中，不少人受过一定程度的医疗培训，但并没有配备正式的后备医生。科恩菲尔德说，当船员们开始在乘客中询问谁具有医学背景时，能帮上忙的人寥寥无几。
Feeling the urgency of the situation, Kornfeld stepped in. He officially began assisting the crew on May 1—last Friday—at first assuming that the doctor would need aid for just a day or two while he recovered from a presumably short-lived, flu-like illness. But the situation rapidly began to intensify. The next day, the ailing passenger, a German woman, died; at about the same time, test results from sick passengers who had left the cruise were beginning to trickle back—sending the word hantavirus surging through the ship. The ship’s doctor was so stricken with symptoms that he had to confine himself to his quarters. A deadly infectious disease was likely on board, and “the ship’s doctor was not going to be able to function as the ship’s doctor,” Kornfeld said. The cruise’s main medical duties now, by default, fell to him.
感受到形势的紧迫，科恩菲尔德决定介入。他于5月1日——上周五——正式开始协助船员，起初以为船医只是患了一场短暂的类流感疾病，自己帮一两天忙就行。但局势急转直下。第二天，那位患病的德国女乘客去世了；几乎同一时间，此前离船就医的患者检测结果陆续传回——“汉坦病毒”这个词如同电流般在船上迅速蔓延。船医的症状严重到不得不将自己隔离在舱房中。一种致命的传染病极有可能已经登船，而“船医已经无法再履行船医的职责了”，科恩菲尔德说。邮轮的主要医疗工作，事实上已经落在了他的肩上。
Kornfeld had retired from his full-time oncology job more than a decade ago, although he still picks up shifts here and there at several of Oregon’s rural hospitals. Now he was being thrust into a nerve-racking, life-or-death situation, and caring for ill and potentially infectious patients while trying to communicate with the rest of the passengers on board, all with very limited resources. Several members of the crew assisted him where they could. But although the ship had a medical facility of sorts, Kornfeld told me he found little more than the supplies that a cruise doctor would need to deal with routine illness at sea: some anti-inflammatory drugs, a few over-the-counter medications, a fleet of oxygen tanks—unsurprisingly, not the sorts of chest scanners or ventilators that could come in handy for diagnosing and managing severe respiratory illness. The ship did have plenty of surgical masks, though, plus some N95 respirators. Kornfeld strapped one on each day that he was with the sick, along with goggles, an apron, and gloves.
科恩菲尔德十多年前就已从全职肿瘤科工作中退休，尽管他至今仍偶尔在俄勒冈州几家乡村医院代班。如今，他被推入了一个高度紧张、生死攸关的境地——在资源极其有限的条件下，既要照护可能具有传染性的患者，又要与船上其他乘客沟通情况。几名船员在力所能及之处协助他。但尽管船上设有某种意义上的医疗设施，科恩菲尔德告诉我，他发现里面不过是一些邮轮医生应对海上常见病症的基本物资：一些消炎药、几种非处方药、一批氧气罐——毫不意外，并没有那种对诊断和处理严重呼吸系统疾病大有裨益的胸部扫描仪或呼吸机。不过船上倒是备有充足的外科口罩和一些N95防护口罩。在照看患者的每一天，科恩菲尔德都会戴上N95口罩，配上护目镜、防护围裙和手套。
Kornfeld’s new role on the boat put him at one of the central nodes of a global effort to save these patients—and, ultimately, contain the outbreak. In between checking on his patients, he juggled phone calls, emails, and WhatsApp messages from medical and research professionals from several groups, he told me, including the WHO and Oceanwide Expeditions, the company running the cruise. Among the experts he connected with were some of the world’s foremost hantavirus researchers; whatever questions he had, he got the answers to. (When reached for comment, the WHO pointed me to a Thursday press conference, but declined to comment on Kornfeld specifically. Oceanwide declined to comment on “individual stories” from the MV Hondius, instead pointing me to its press releases on the outbreak.)
科恩菲尔德在船上扮演的新角色，使他成为一场全球性救援与疫情遏制行动的核心节点之一。在查看患者之余，他不停地接打电话、回复邮件、处理WhatsApp消息，对接来自多个机构的医学和研究专业人士——据他所述，其中包括世卫组织以及运营此次航行的Oceanwide探险公司。他联系上的专家中，不乏世界顶尖的汉坦病毒研究者；无论他提出什么问题，都能得到解答。（世卫组织在回应采访请求时，将我引向了周四的新闻发布会，但拒绝就科恩菲尔德个人发表评论。Oceanwide公司则表示不对“洪迪乌斯”号上的”个人故事”置评，转而让我参阅其关于本次疫情的新闻稿。）
In some ways, the likely presence of hantavirus made the situation simpler. “In medicine, sick is sick,” Kornfeld said. Hantavirus doesn’t have a specific cure or treatment; helping those who had been presumably infected wasn’t a matter of administering a particular drug but of monitoring, preventing deterioration, and triaging any other passengers or crew who came to him with worrying symptoms.
从某种意义上说，汉坦病毒的大概率存在反而让局势变得更加明朗。“在医学里，病就是病，”科恩菲尔德说。汉坦病毒没有特效药或特定疗法；救治疑似感染者的关键不在于使用某种特定药物，而在于密切监测、防止病情恶化，以及对前来就诊的其他出现可疑症状的乘客和船员进行甄别分诊。
After the German passenger died, the ship docked off the shore of Cabo Verde to await the crew members’ medical evacuation. Doctors from the island came on board to assess the patients but did not stay for long. Kornfeld continued to attend to his patients almost around the clock: On Tuesday, he told me, he spent nearly 18 hours anxiously monitoring their fluid status and oxygen levels, hoping that their heart and lungs would not fail; that night, he estimates he cobbled together three hours of sleep.
德国女乘客去世后，船只停靠在佛得角近海，等待对患病船员进行医疗撤离。岛上的医生曾登船评估患者状况，但并未久留。科恩菲尔德继续几乎全天候地守护着他的患者：他告诉我，周二那天，他花了将近18个小时焦灼地监测着患者的体液状态和血氧水平，祈祷他们的心肺不要衰竭；那天夜里，他估计自己只拼凑出了三个小时的睡眠。
By then, Kornfeld had also become a key source of intel for his fellow passengers. They wanted to know the risks of the situation; they wanted him to tell them how concerned to be about diarrhea, a back ache, an errant cough—could some of it mean that they had the virus too? Some also approached him with worries about their medications, which were running dangerously low, conversing with him through masks between his shifts caring for patients. Eventually, he became known by many around the boat as “Doctor Steve.”
到那时，科恩菲尔德也已经成为船上同行乘客们的重要信息来源。人们想知道当前的风险有多大；想让他判断腹泻、腰痛、偶尔的咳嗽是否意味着自己也感染了病毒。还有人在他换班的间隙隔着口罩向他倾诉对药物即将耗尽的担忧。渐渐地，船上许多人都开始叫他“史蒂夫医生”。
With hantavirus now a clear and present threat, the ship’s crew took action, too, Peter Marsh, one of the ship’s passengers and birders, told me—”trying to contain the situation and keep the rest of us safe.” They advised masking and distancing, and asked passengers to stay in their cabin as much as they could when they weren’t carefully socializing on the outdoor deck; the crew doubled down on sanitization procedures all across the boat. Essentially, “we started adopting the previous COVID protocol,” Kenneth Petersen, another bird-watcher colleague of Kornfeld’s on the ship, told me. Kornfeld’s presence was especially reassuring to the ship’s many birders, among whom the doctor was something of a celebrity for his species-spotting prowess, Marsh, who has known Kornfeld for more than a decade, told me: “When he gave medical advice, they were very receptive.”
随着汉坦病毒威胁日益明确，船员也迅速采取了行动。船上的乘客兼观鸟者彼得·马什告诉我，他们在“努力控制局面，保护我们其余人的安全”。船方建议乘客佩戴口罩、保持社交距离，并要求大家尽量待在舱房内，只在户外甲板上有节制地社交；与此同时，船员全面加强了全船的消毒程序。“实际上，我们启用了之前新冠时期的防疫方案，”科恩菲尔德的另一位观鸟同好、同船乘客肯尼斯·彼得森告诉我。科恩菲尔德的存在对船上众多观鸟者而言格外令人安心，在这个圈子里，他凭借出色的物种辨识能力早已是名人般的存在。与科恩菲尔德相识十余年的马什对我说：“当他给出医学建议时，大家都非常信服。”
The two sick crew members were evacuated on Wednesday, along with—out of an abundance of caution—the traveling companion of the female passenger who died aboard last week. In the meantime, no one else has come to Kornfeld with concerning symptoms, he told me. Overall, the mood aboard has remained relatively optimistic, the passengers I spoke with said: Many people are still (carefully) participating in morning outdoor exercise classes, and in the afternoons, Kornfeld still spots a bit of dancing around the deck as people enjoy their drinks. And they’ve shown up in whatever ways they can for one another. Even as crew members ailed, their colleagues passed them words of encouragement through their closed cabin doors; when they were medically evacuated, passengers signed get-well cards.
周三，两名患病船员被撤离，出于谨慎考虑，上周在船上去世的那位女乘客的同行旅伴也一并转移。与此同时，再没有其他人向科恩菲尔德报告令人担忧的症状。我采访的几位乘客表示，船上的整体情绪仍然相对乐观：许多人依然（小心翼翼地）参加每天早上的户外健身课，到了下午，科恩菲尔德还能看到有人在甲板上随着饮品微微起舞。人们也在力所能及之处彼此支撑。即使在船员卧病期间，他们的同事也会隔着紧闭的舱门为他们送上鼓励的话语；在他们被医疗撤离时，乘客们签好了慰问卡送行。
The ship left Cabo Verde yesterday and is expected to dock in the Canary Islands this weekend. Now aboard are officials from the WHO and Europe’s CDC, plus two infectious-disease doctors from the Netherlands, Maria Van Kerkhove, the acting director of epidemic and pandemic management at the WHO, told me. They will watch and wait to see if others fall sick. The next big hurdle will be getting everyone else home, as officials assess the boat and its passengers, and countries with nationals aboard weigh how to handle their return.
邮轮昨天已离开佛得角，预计本周末抵达加那利群岛。世卫组织代理流行病和大流行管理司司长玛丽亚·范·科霍芙告诉我，船上现已有世卫组织和欧洲疾控中心的官员，以及两名来自荷兰的传染病医生。他们将密切观察，等待是否还有其他人发病。下一个重大挑战将是如何送所有人安全回家——当局需要对船只和乘客进行评估，而船上各国乘客的母国也在斟酌如何处理本国公民的返程事宜。
Kornfeld expects to be monitored closely in the coming days, given how much time he spent with sick patients. He told me that he’s taken at least some comfort in knowing that this species of the virus seemed to require intense, prolonged exposure to do damage, and that he took the proper precautions; as a physician, part of his charter is to help others, even at his own personal risk. Now “if I’m not helpful anymore, I’m happy to just fade back and become a passenger again,” he said. Although this trip may be more remembered for its hantavirus troubles, Kornfeld told me his initial birding ambitions weren’t for naught. He saw roughly two dozen new species on the weekslong trip. And although the boat never landed on Cabo Verde, he still spotted one of the birds he had hoped to see there, flying over the island. His most recent eBird log is marked May 3, 2026: a Cape Verde swift.
科恩菲尔德预计自己在接下来几天将受到密切监测，毕竟他与患者共处了大量时间。他告诉我，至少有一件事让他略感宽慰——这一型病毒似乎需要高强度、长时间的暴露才会致病，而他已经做了适当的防护。作为一名医生，救助他人本就是他的使命所在，即便这意味着承担个人风险。如今，“如果我不再被需要了，我很乐意退回去，重新做一名普通乘客，”他说。尽管这趟旅程或许更多会因汉坦病毒而被人铭记，科恩菲尔德告诉我，他最初的观鸟愿望并非徒劳。在这趟数周的航程中，他观测到了大约二十多个新物种。虽然船只最终未能登陆佛得角，他仍然在飞越岛屿上空时看到了一种他此前期待已久的鸟。他最近一条eBird记录标注的日期是2026年5月3日：一只佛得角雨燕。
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