UN News Today 05 May 2026 |

Human spread of hantavirus not ruled out on cruise ship 

Hantavirus victims on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean may have been infected with the disease prior to boarding, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. 

The deadly disease outbreak on the ship has triggered an international public health response. To date, seven of the 147 passengers and crew have reported ill and three have died. 

The situation remains fluid on board the vessel, which is currently off the coast of Cabo Verde, said WHO’s Dr Maria Van Kerkhove:  

“We have heard from quite a few people, you know, on the boat. We just want you to know we are working with the ship’s operators. We are working with the countries where you are from. We hear you. We know that you are scared.” 

Dr. Van Kerkhove said that one patient remains in intensive care in South Africa, but their condition is improving. 

Two other patients who are still on board the ship are being prepared for medical evacuation to the Netherlands for treatment.  

As a precaution, passengers have been asked to remain in their cabins while disinfection and other public health measures are carried out.  

There are no other symptomatic patients on board although a further suspected case who reported a mild fever is “doing well”, the WHO official said. 

In Lebanon, the same fears and dangers persist despite ceasefire: UNHCR 

To Lebanon, where death and destruction have continued despite a ceasefire that began on 17 April, with communities still unable to return to their homes, humanitarians said on Tuesday. 

In an update from Beirut, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, reported that civilians in the south and parts of the Bekaa [Valley] are “living with the same fear for their lives as before the ceasefire”. 

All the while, more families are being forced to flee the violence and many of the displaced are not allowed to return by the Israeli army “in areas that it controls in the south”, said Karolina Lindholm Billing, UN refugee agency Representative in Lebanon. 

She explained that many southerners who have tried to go home since the ceasefire found widespread destruction, with no electricity or water, damaged or non-functional healthcare facilities and schools, along with ongoing risks from unexploded ordinance: 

“One man, he showed me a photo on his phone of his demolished house, and he’s now back inside a sleeping on the floor in Saida in a classroom that serves as a collective shelter with nothing to return to and a very uncertain future.” 

Since 17 April, at least 380 people have been killed despite a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, UNHCR agency says. 

UN leads call to prepare ‘for when digital systems fail’ 

It can be annoying when we lose wifi signal, but what about if everything digital we rely on were to crash suddenly – from satellites to life-support systems in hospitals? 

That’s the nightmare scenario that the UN is trying to avoid, in a call to all Member States to work together to avoid the cascading impacts of a “digital pandemic”. 

The risks to all of us are real and they have already been observed on Earth and in space, including a solar storm that narrowly missed Earth in 2012 that could have knocked out power grids and communications across entire continents, says Doreen Bogdan-Martin, head of the International Telecommunication Union, ITU. 

“The common denominator of these unintentional disruptions is their tendency to cascade with impacts that spread across sectors like finance, like healthcare, transport, energy, and communications. And this can often happen simultaneously.” 

Other risks include the alarming growth of space debris which is already threatening to make it impossible to launch satellites, and that could lock us out of space. 

This would jeopardize satellite navigation, financial network and weather forecasting all at once, warns ITU, along with the UN agency for disaster risk reduction, UNDRR. 

Both agencies add that extreme weather is growing more violent with climate change and has severed digital infrastructure entirely, turning disasters into humanitarian crises in emergencies. 

This finding is backed up by data showing that up to 89 per cent of digital disruption linked to natural hazards are caused by secondary effects rather than the initial shock.  

“The number of people ultimately affected can be up to 10 times higher than those initially exposed” to the original incident, the UN agencies say. 

Daniel Johnson, UN News.