Pandemic

Hantavirus Fear Comes to the Remotest Islands in the World

Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn Island are nearly impossible​​ to get to. Somehow, hantavirus-exposed travelers ended up on both.

Matthew Petti | 5.13.2026 4:58 PM

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(Photo: Tristan da Cunha Government)

The island of Tristan da Cunha (population 224) has no airport. Its seaport, which can only handle small boats, is a week's journey from any other human settlement. So how do doctors get to an urgent medical case? It turns out, by parachuting in.

The British Army launched its first-ever airdrop of a medical team on Saturday in response to a hantavirus case on Tristan da Cunha. The plane loaded up with medical supplies, a doctor, a nurse, and a platoon of paratroopers from the 16 Air Assault Brigade at Royal Air Force Brize Norton, the military base outside Oxford. It refueled at Ascension Island before flying 2,000 miles south and dropping them on Tristan da Cunha, one of the few remaining British overseas territories.

The Tristanian victim had taken a trip on the MV Hondius, the infamous cruise ship at the center of an outbreak of hantavirus, a deadly and obscure disease that rarely spreads between humans. And weirdly enough, Tristan da Cunha is not the only remote British outpost affected by the hantavirus........

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