The Dutch cruise ship „Hondius", with about 150 passengers and crew from 88 countries, has finally been allowed to dock - but not in the Canary Islands, as expected, in Spain after coordination with the WHO. Three passengers have already died of hantavirus. A doctor on board is in critical condition and is waiting for an air evacuation.

Switzerland has meanwhile confirmed its own hantavirus case. And so a disease that until recently was a „rarity" now has its own global agenda.

The leader of the Canary Islands was blunt: they don't want the ship to dock. It's one thing to take in a vessel in distress. It's another to take in a pathogen the WHO suspects can be transmitted from human to human - the first such case in the history of hantavirus.

Cape Verde, where the ship is currently anchored, doesn't have the medical capacity for something like this. Spain accepted the cargo - „in line with international health protocols and humanitarian obligations", as the authorities put it. Which in translation means: someone has to take it.

And while Europe asks itself where to put the cruise ship, the question for us in the Balkans is different. How many of our citizens are on cruise ships this summer? How many families save up for two years to send a retired couple on a „summer holiday" with one of those „cheap" Atlantic packages? With 147 passengers from 88 countries on the „Hondius" - it's entirely possible someone from the region is among them. A Montenegrin citizen has already been confirmed.

The WHO has so far worked on the assumption that hantavirus doesn't transmit between people, only from rodents to humans. Those assumptions are now being reassessed - on a ship in the Atlantic. That is what's called: learning in real time.

And while we learn, we ask - does the tourism industry have protocols for cases like this? Who is saving the money for ship-board quarantine? Who carries the responsibility for the deaths of three people when it's well known that cruise ships are containers for infection - covid, norovirus, legionnaires', and now hantavirus?

The lesson from „Hondius" isn't about hantavirus. The lesson is about how the global tourism industry still operates on the principle of „we hoped it wouldn't happen".