hantavirus cruise – Evacuated passengers from the MV Hondius began flying home from Tenerife in protective gear, as health officials warn the public risk is low.
A hantavirus scare on the MV Hondius is shifting from a sealed ship to a tightly managed airlift, as evacuated passengers began traveling home from the Canary Islands.
The first people to leave the cruise vessel arrived in Tenerife. where Spanish passengers were disembarked at the port of Granadilla and then flown to Madrid for care at a military hospital.. Hours later. an evacuation flight carrying French passengers landed in Paris. met by emergency vehicles. with plans put in motion to isolate and test those brought off the ship.
The anchoring of the MV Hondius in Tenerife triggered a multi-country evacuation effort expected to run until Monday. with evacuation flights scheduled for travelers from more than 20 countries.. Passengers were escorted to shore by staff wearing full-body protective gear and breathing masks. reflecting the controlled approach authorities said was necessary due to the outbreak on board.
In Tenerife. Spanish authorities said that when the evacuation began. none of the more than 140 people on the ship had shown symptoms of the virus.. Still. protective measures were visibly part of the process. including hazmat suits. face masks and respirators for those disembarking and for workers at the port.. Footage showed passengers donning protective suits on the tarmac and being sprayed with disinfectant.
The timeline also included signs that medical monitoring would not end once flights took off.. French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said in a statement that one of the five French passengers developed symptoms during the flight to Paris. and that all five were placed into strict isolation with plans to be tested.
Since the outbreak began, three deaths have been reported. Officials also said that five passengers who had left the ship earlier are infected with hantavirus, a detail that has increased scrutiny on what happens next for those still on board.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sought to limit public alarm, reiterating that the general population should not be worried.. He said the outbreak is not comparable to COVID-19 and that the risk to the public is low. warning against panic or fear.. Even with that message. disembarking and port workers wore protective gear. underscoring that authorities were treating exposure on the ship as a serious public-health concern.
Hantavirus is usually associated with people inhaling contaminated residue from rodent droppings, and it does not spread easily between people.. But officials said the specific Andes virus detected in the cruise ship outbreak may. in rare cases. be able to spread between people.. Symptoms typically appear between one and eight weeks after exposure. a timing factor that helps explain the long monitoring periods being discussed across countries.
Authorities said passengers and crew members left their luggage behind and were allowed only a small bag with essentials such as a cellphone. charger and documentation. a measure intended to reduce the movement of potentially contaminated items.. Some crew members and the body of a passenger who died on board were expected to remain on the vessel. which is scheduled to sail to Rotterdam. where Spanish authorities said it would undergo disinfection.. The cruise company said the voyage to Rotterdam takes about five days.
Even after repatriation flights, health oversight is expected to continue at destinations.. The World Health Organization recommended that passengers’ home countries carry out active monitoring and follow-up. including daily health checks at home or in a specialized facility.. The WHO said it left the specifics of policy to individual countries, while emphasizing that its guidance was clear.
Several countries have already outlined what that monitoring could look like.. In the United Kingdom. authorities said passengers would be hospitalized for 72 hours of quarantine before moving into six weeks of self-isolation.. The French plan. which initially mirrored similar protocols. was adjusted after Sunday’s flight. with the prime minister saying the five French passengers would remain in hospital “until further orders.”
The evacuation also spread far beyond Spain and France.. A Dutch evacuation plane landed Sunday evening in the Netherlands city of Eindhoven. with passengers wearing masks and carrying belongings in white plastic bags.. The Dutch Foreign Ministry said 26 people were on board. including eight Dutch citizens and travelers from India. Germany. Argentina. Belgium. Greece. Portugal. Ukraine. Guatemala. the Philippines and Montenegro.. Dutch citizens were being taken home by medical transport and told to self-quarantine for six weeks. while local health services were arranging quarantine locations for others.
For Americans, U.S.. health officials described an initial assessment phase.. The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr.. Jay Bhattacharya. said Americans would first be flown to the University of Nebraska. which has a federally funded quarantine facility. where officials would assess whether they had been in close contact with any symptomatic people and evaluate their risk levels for spreading the virus.. After that. he told CNN’s “State of the Union” they would be given a choice between staying in Nebraska or returning home. where conditions would be monitored by state and local health agencies.
Bhattacharya also noted that seven Americans who left the cruise have been in the U.S.. for about two weeks, distributed across different parts of the country.. That detail points to why health agencies are emphasizing ongoing monitoring rather than treating the evacuation itself as the end of the risk.
Other countries were still moving people out of Tenerife.. Australia said it was sending a plane expected to arrive Monday to evacuate its citizens and people from nearby countries. including New Zealand and unspecified Asian countries. according to Spain’s Health Minister Mónica García.. García said the evacuation flight from the island was expected to be the last to leave Tenerife.
Norway also deployed specialized support. Its Directorate for Civil Protection said it sent an ambulance plane to the island with personnel trained to transport patients with high-risk infections.
Meanwhile, British medical teams were operating far from the main evacuation routes.. British Army medics parachuted onto the remote South Atlantic territory of Tristan da Cunha after a resident was flagged for a suspected hantavirus case.. The patient was described as a passenger from the MV Hondius who had disembarked last month.. The U.K.. Defense Ministry said a team of six paratroopers and two medical clinicians jumped Saturday from a Royal Air Force transport plane. which also dropped oxygen and medical equipment.
Tristan da Cunha is the most remote inhabited British overseas territory, about 1,500 miles from the nearest inhabited island, St.. Helena.. The island group has no airstrip and is usually reachable only by a six-day boat journey from Cape Town. South Africa. highlighting how difficult logistics can be when a suspected case appears.
In Spain, officials reported an additional case under investigation.. Spanish health authorities said a woman in the southeastern province of Alicante suspected of being infected tested negative for hantavirus.. The woman was said to have been traveling on the same flight as a Dutch woman who died in Johannesburg after travel linked to the cruise ship.
Taken together. the evacuation effort shows how governments are responding to a health threat that combines careful movement of people with sustained observation afterward.. Even as WHO leadership stresses that the wider public risk is low. the emphasis on protective procedures. isolation plans. and weeks-long monitoring reflects how slowly symptoms can appear and how seriously health officials are taking the possibility—however rare—of limited person-to-person spread in this outbreak.
hantavirus cruise evacuation MV Hondius Tenerife WHO monitoring guidance Canary Islands outbreak Centers for Disease Control quarantine