Spain readies for evacuations as hantavirus-hit cruise ship heads for Canary Islands
Health authorities across four continents are trying to track down and monitor passengers who disembarked the ship before the deadly outbreak was detected.
Passengers on the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (Photo: AP)
MADRID: Spanish authorities on Friday (May 8) were preparing to receive more than 140 passengers and crew members on board a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship headed for the Canary Islands, where health officials have said they will perform careful evacuations.
The vessel is expected to reach the Spanish island of Tenerife, off the coast of West Africa, on Saturday or Sunday.
“They will arrive at a completely isolated, cordoned-off area,” said Virginia Barcones, Spain's head of emergency services, on Thursday.
Spain is coordinating with governments whose citizens are on board the ship about evacuation plans, Barcones said.
The United States has agreed to send a plane to the Canary Islands to repatriate its 17 citizens from the cruise ship, she said. The British government also said it will charter a plane to evacuate the nearly two dozen British citizens still on the MV Hondius.
At least three passengers have died, and several others are sick. The World Health Organization (WHO) said the risk to the wider public from the outbreak is low.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is due in Tenerife on Saturday to help coordinate the evacuation, Spanish ministry sources said.
Hantavirus is usually spread by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and is not easily transmitted between people. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
None of the remaining passengers or crew on the ship is currently symptomatic, the Netherlands-based Oceanwide Expeditions cruise ship company said Thursday.
Health authorities across four continents were continuing to track down and monitor passengers who disembarked the ship before the deadly outbreak was detected, and are trying to trace others who may have come into contact with them since then.
In interviews with The Associated Press, two Spanish passengers - speaking on condition of anonymity because of fears they will be ostracised once on land - said that despite the outbreak, their days aboard have passed with relative tranquillity.
Some people are bird-watching, and others are gathering in common areas to read or attend talks, while wearing masks and social distancing. Both passengers told AP they’re worried about how they’ll be treated in Spain and once home.
“We’re scared by all the news that’s coming out, by how people are going to receive us, by how people see us,” one said. “We’re just normal people. We’ve heard that this is a millionaire’s cruise, and it’s the complete opposite of reality. And we’re scared by this.”
Officials sought to reassure the public in the Canary Islands about possible exposure to the virus among the general population.
Once the ship reaches Tenerife, passengers will be evacuated in small boats to buses only after their repatriation flights are ready to take them, Spanish officials said Friday. Passengers will be transported in isolated and guarded vehicles, officials said, adding that the parts of the airport they travel through will be cordoned off.
COUNTRIES PREPARE TO TRACK PASSENGERS
On Apr 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, Dutch officials and the ship's operator said Thursday.
It wasn’t until May 2 that health authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a ship passenger, the WHO said.
The KLM flight attendant who tested negative for the virus was working on a flight headed from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on Apr 25, and had later fallen ill.
The cruise passenger who was briefly aboard that flight - a Dutch woman whose husband died on the ship - was too ill to stay on the international flight to Europe and was taken off the plane in Johannesburg, where she died.
The Dutch public health service is undertaking contact tracing on passengers who had contact with the ill woman before she left the plane.
On Friday, UK health authorities said a third British national who had been a passenger on the ship is suspected of being infected with hantavirus. The UK Health Security Agency said the person is on the island of Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory in the south Atlantic where the ship stopped in April. There was no word on the condition of the person.
Spanish health officials said Friday a woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante has symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection and is being tested.
She was a passenger on the same flight as the Dutch woman who died in Johannesburg after travelling on the cruise ship, Secretary of State for Health Javier Padilla told reporters.
Two other Britons who were on the ship have been confirmed to have the virus. One is hospitalised in the Netherlands and the other in South Africa.
Authorities in South Africa are working to trace contacts of any passengers who previously got off the ship. They have focused mainly on an Apr 25 flight from the remote island of St Helena in the South Atlantic to Johannesburg, the day after some passengers disembarked on the island.
Some state officials across the US said they are monitoring a small number of residents who were on the ship and already went home, as well as people who may have come into contact with ship passengers. None has symptoms.
