hantavirus cruise – First passengers have started leaving the MV Hondius in the Canary Islands after a hantavirus outbreak. U.S. travelers face CDC-led monitoring.
Passengers have begun disembarking from a Dutch-flagged cruise ship that was struck by a hantavirus outbreak after arriving in Spain’s Canary Islands early Sunday, with health officials saying there were no visible symptoms among those who have left or remained.
The ship, the MV Hondius, arrived in Granadilla on Tenerife—the largest of the Canary Islands—after sailing earlier this week from Cape Verde. It carried nearly 150 people from more than 15 countries, including 17 Americans, according to the ship’s operator.
So far, officials said that nobody leaving the vessel was showing symptoms of hantavirus. The outbreak has been linked to at least nine confirmed or suspected cases, including three deaths: a Dutch couple and a German woman.
Oceanwide Expeditions said evacuation is now underway using launch boats that can carry between five and 10 people. Under a detailed plan, Spanish passengers are disembarking first, followed by departures by air that are being scheduled in stages based on route readiness.
After the initial Spanish departures, a Netherlands-bound flight is expected to take Germans, Belgians, Greeks, and part of the crew.. Additional flights are then planned for Canada. Turkey. France. Great Britain. Ireland. and the United States in sequence. with the timing dependent on when aircraft are available.
The final departure is slated for Australia, with the ship needing an aircraft that Australia must provide. That leg is scheduled for Monday and is expected to include some passengers traveling onward from New Zealand and parts of the Asian region.
Officials said there are not expected to be health screenings on land. Instead, passengers will be moved quickly from buses to planes and off Tenerife as fast as possible.
Once disembarkation is complete, Oceanwide Expeditions said a skeleton crew will take on supplies before the vessel begins its journey to Rotterdam, Netherlands. The company estimated the trip will take about five days.
The U.S.. response is being coordinated through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.. The CDC said it is sending a team of epidemiologists and medical professionals to the Canary Islands to conduct an exposure risk assessment for each American passenger and to advise on what level of monitoring is required.
After the Americans are removed from the Hondius, they are expected to be flown back to the U.S. on a repatriation plane dispatched by the CDC and HHS. The medical flight is set to land at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska.
From there, the Americans will be taken to a specialized biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.. Michael Wadman. medical director of the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. said each American will have their own room during a quarantine period of unspecified length.
The broader evacuation effort is being coordinated with the World Health Organization and several other health organizations.. WHO’s Director-General Dr.. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus traveled to Tenerife before the ship arrived. underscoring the attention being paid to how the outbreak may have spread aboard the vessel and through passenger travel.
Hantaviruses are diseases transmitted to people from rodents, according to the CDC, through exposure to urine, droppings, or saliva. Symptoms may take up to eight weeks after exposure to appear, which can complicate efforts to connect cases to a single point in time during a multi-country voyage.
WHO says the Andes strain is the only hantavirus known to transmit through human-to-human contact. WHO’s director-general assessed the public risk as “low,” a view that has been echoed by acting CDC director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
Bhattacharya said in a statement that hantavirus is not spread by people without symptoms and that transmission requires close contact, adding that the risk to the American public is very low.
Despite the public-risk assessment, investigators are still working to determine the source of the outbreak.. Tedros said that before boarding. the Dutch couple who died—an estimated 70-year-old man and his 69-year-old wife—are believed to have spent weeks traveling through Argentina. Chile. and Uruguay on a bird-watching trip in areas where rodents carrying the Andes virus are present.
WHO said the man developed symptoms on April 6 and died on the ship on April 11. It also said that samples were not taken at the time because his symptoms resembled other respiratory illnesses and hantavirus was not suspected then.
His wife later went ashore when the ship docked on the British territorial island of St. Helena. WHO reported that she developed serious symptoms during a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, on April 25, and died there the next day. Testing confirmed she had contracted hantavirus.
WHO also reported that the German woman developed symptoms on April 28 and died aboard the ship on May 2.
Other cases were handled through additional emergency medical evacuations. WHO said three patients were flown off the Hondius to the Netherlands for emergency care this week, while a Swiss man began showing symptoms after disembarking and was receiving treatment in Zurich.
In separate actions, a British man was medically evacuated to South Africa, and another British national who had disembarked the ship is hospitalized on Tristan da Cunha, a British territory.
Oceanwide Expeditions said that 32 passengers from about a dozen countries had already left the Hondius in St.. Helena, including the Dutch woman who later died.. U.S.. travelers who returned to the United States before the outbreak was discovered were reported to be monitored by state health agencies in California. Georgia. Texas. Virginia. and Arizona.
The Hondius originally set sail on April 1 from Ushuaia, Argentina. The route included stops in the South Atlantic islands, moving through locations such as the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, Tristan da Cunha, and Gough Island before reaching St. Helena from April 21 to April 24.
After that segment of the voyage, the ship anchored off Cape Verde—a West African archipelago—for several days before continuing to the Canary Islands, where it ultimately arrived and where the outbreak response accelerated.
Officials have repeatedly emphasized that hantavirus does not appear to spread casually through the general public.. However. the timing of symptoms and the complexity of the itinerary mean authorities are still focused on identifying where exposure may have occurred. how cases developed during travel. and what monitoring is appropriate for those returning to different countries.
For passengers and families, the immediate priority is movement and care: disembarkation is being conducted in stages, flights are being scheduled in sequence as aircraft become available, and Americans are entering a CDC-directed monitoring and quarantine process upon arrival in Omaha.
As the ship’s remaining crew prepares supplies and begins the trip back to Rotterdam. public health teams will continue working through the questions that linger after a multi-country voyage—especially how exposure may have linked to specific ports. and whether any additional testing or follow-up monitoring will be needed for travelers who disembarked earlier.
hantavirus outbreak cruise ship evacuation Canary Islands CDC quarantine Offutt Air Force Base MV Hondius