Granadilla de Abona (Spain) (AFP) – A cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak left Spain’s Canary Islands bound for the Netherlands on Monday, after the last passengers on board disembarked and were flown home to quarantine. Three people died after the rare virus that usually spreads among rodents was detected on board the MV Hondius, sparking a global health scare. No vaccines or specific treatments exist for the virus, but health officials have insisted that the risk to the public was low and dismissed comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The ship set off from Tenerife on Monday evening after the last 28 people were taken off, according to AFP reporters at the scene. “It is expected to take MV Hondius six days to sail to Rotterdam,” cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said in a statement. “A provisional arrival date is the evening of Sunday, 17 May 2026.” The ship has 25 crew and two medical staff on board, and is also carrying the body of a German passenger who died during the cruise, it added.
The complex evacuation procedure saw 94 people of 19 different nationalities taken from the Dutch-flagged vessel on Sunday. Spanish authorities said the vessel, which was originally only authorised to anchor offshore on health and safety grounds, docked in port because of unfavourable weather. AFP journalists at the small industrial port of Granadilla on Tenerife saw workers connect a walkway to the ship and people leaving the vessel en route to their repatriation flights. The central Spanish government has stressed that there would be no contact with the population. The final evacuees included Australians, a New Zealander, a Briton, and crew members.
Among the completed repatriations, a French woman, one of five evacuees from France placed in isolation in Paris, started to feel unwell on Sunday night, and “tests came back positive,” Health Minister Stephanie Rist said. A Spanish passenger has also tested positive, the health ministry in Madrid said, adding that results for the 13 other Spanish evacuees were so far negative. Late Sunday, the US health department said one American national evacuated from the ship had “mild symptoms” and that another had tested positive for the Andes virus, the only hantavirus strain that is transmissible between humans.
Twelve staff members at a Dutch hospital treating an evacuee who tested positive were meanwhile in preventative quarantine due to procedural errors in taking blood and disposing of the patient’s urine. They would be isolated for six weeks as a precaution, “even though the risk of infection is low,” the Radboud University Hospital in the east of the country said. Spain’s health ministry defended the rigour of the evacuations, where medical teams escorted passengers from the ship to an airport on Tenerife under close supervision and following health checks. “From the start, all the measures adopted have aimed at cutting the possible chains of transmission… all measures for prevention and control of transmission have been applied,” it said in a statement.
In all, eight cases have been confirmed in the outbreak, and two more are listed as “probable,” according to the World Health Organization and national health authorities, with citizens of six countries affected. Other suspected cases and potential close contacts with infected people are being investigated, with health authorities in several countries tracking passengers who had already disembarked from the ship, plus anyone who may have come into contact with them.
In a video shared on Monday by Oceanwide Expeditions, captain Jan Dobrogowski paid tribute to the “unity and quiet strength” of everyone on board and highlighted the “courage and selfless resolve” of the crew. The MV Hondius left Argentina, where hantavirus is endemic, on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde. The WHO believes the first infection occurred before the start of the voyage, followed by transmission between humans on board the vessel. But Argentine health officials have questioned whether the outbreak originated in Ushuaia, based on the virus’s weeks-long incubation period and other factors.
© 2024 AFP
