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THE CRUISE SHIP hit with a deadly hantavirus outbreak has reached Tenerife in the Canary Islands, where most of the nearly 150 people on board will be evacuated and flown home after weeks at sea.
The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius arrived at the Spanish port of Granadilla escorted by a Civil Guard vessel.
Cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said all passengers and a limited number of crew members are expected to begin to disembark from the ship managed groups from around 8am. Once disembarked, they will be transferred immediately to their allocated aircraft.
This includes two Irish people, who are currently understood to be well.
The Department of Health said they will be transferred to an HSE facility when they arrive in Ireland, where they will need to quarantine for a period of time and will be actively monitored.
“If they become symptomatic, they will be assessed and treated as appropriate,” the department said.
Three passengers from the ship – a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman – have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.
The Andes strain of hantavirus, the only strain that can transmit from person to person, has been confirmed among those who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.
“We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact,” WHO’s epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director Maria Van Kerkhove said yesterday.
But the risk to the general public and the people of the Canaries remained low, she added.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who arrived in Spain yesterday and is expected to oversee the ship evacuation, gave the same assurance and thanked the people of Tenerife for their solidarity.
In an open letter to the people of Tenerife, he wrote: “I need you to hear me clearly. This is not another Covid.”
After arriving on the island, he said he was confident the operation would be a success. “Spain is ready and prepared,” he told reporters.
At the port of Granadilla de Abona early this morning, white tents were sent up along the quay and the police had secured part of the port.
Despite the situation, daily life appeared largely normal: some people were swimming, others shopping at the market or sitting at café terraces.
“There are worries there could be a danger, but honestly I don’t see people being very concerned,” said David Parada, a lottery vendor.
Regional authorities have refused to allow the vessel to dock. Instead, it will remain offshore while passengers are screened and evacuated between today and Monday – the only window health officials say the weather will allow.
The WHO said Friday it had confirmed six cases out of eight suspected ones. There are no suspected cases remaining on the ship.
The MV Hondius is sailing from Cape Verde, where three infected people had already been evacuated earlier in the week.
In Madrid, Spain’s health and interior ministers insisted there would be “no contact” with the local population, and that passengers would leave “by nationality groups”.
“All areas (the passengers) pass through will be sealed off,” the interior minister said, adding a maritime exclusion zone would be in force around the vessel.
The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina on 1 April for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.
Provincial health official Juan Petrina said there was an “almost zero chance” the Dutch man linked to the outbreak contracted the disease in Ushuaia based on the virus’s incubation period, among other factors.
Health authorities in several countries have been tracking passengers who had already disembarked and anyone who may have come into contact with them.
A flight attendant on the Dutch airline KLM, who came into contact with an infected passenger from the cruise ship and later showed mild symptoms, tested negative for hantavirus, the WHO said Friday.
The passenger – the wife of the first person to die in the outbreak – had briefly been on a plane bound from Johannesburg to the Netherlands on 25 April, but was removed before take-off.
She died the following day in a Johannesburg hospital.
Spanish authorities said a woman on that flight was being tested for hantavirus, having developed symptoms at home in eastern Spain. She is in isolation in hospital, said health secretary Javier Padilla.
Two Singapore residents who had been on the ship tested negative for the disease but would remain in quarantine, the city state’s authorities said Friday.
British health authorities also said Friday there was a suspected case on Tristan da Cunha, one of the world’s most isolated settlements with around 220 people.
With reporting from © AFP 2026
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