MV Hondius Arrives Off Tenerife for Passenger Screening and Repatriation After Hantavirus Cases

The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius cruise ship carrying more than 140 passengers and crew is set to arrive off Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands before dawn on 2026-05-11 and will drop anchor at sea without docking. A security perimeter of one nautical mile will be enforced around the vessel as Spanish authorities, supported by the WHO, prepare to ferry passengers and some crew ashore in small boats for immediate medical screening and evacuation flights.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia and Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska arrived on the island on 2026-05-10 to oversee the disembarkation.

Tedros sought to calm local anxiety by directly addressing memories of the 2020 pandemic. “I know you are worried. I know that when you hear the word ‘outbreak’ and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest.

The pain of 2020 is still real,” he said. He added: “This is not another COVID. ” The WHO, Spanish authorities and cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions stated that nobody on the Hondius is currently showing symptoms of hantavirus.

Health Minister Monica Garcia described the multinational operation involving 23 countries as unprecedented and said passengers would disembark under maximum safety conditions. “The risk of contagion for the general population is low,” Garcia stated.

Everyone leaving the ship will be checked for symptoms and will not be taken ashore until a flight is waiting; they must leave all luggage behind and carry only a small bag with essentials, a cellphone, charger and documentation.

Evacuation flights are scheduled to conclude on 2026-05-11 and 2026-05-12. S. K. have dispatched planes for their citizens. S.

Centers for Disease Control. All Spanish passengers, of whom Oceanwide Expeditions listed 13 plus one Spanish crew member, will be transferred to a medical facility in Madrid for quarantine. Maria Van Kerkhove, director of the WHO's Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Management, said the process “will be done in a very choreographed, coordinated way” once the ship anchors, with screening conducted on arrival.

Spain has activated the EU civil protection mechanism, placing a medical evacuation plane equipped for infectious diseases on standby. The Dutch government will work with Spanish authorities and Oceanwide Expeditions to repatriate Dutch passengers and crew as soon as possible after arrival in Tenerife, subject to medical conditions and advice from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

Those without symptoms will enter home quarantine for six weeks under local health monitoring.

Some crew members along with the body of a passenger who died aboard will remain on the Hondius, which will then sail to the Netherlands for disinfection. The president of the Canary Islands said he “won’t be calm” until every passenger and crew member has left the island. Three people have died from hantavirus since the outbreak began.

Five passengers who had already left the ship are confirmed infected. The ship’s unidentified doctor was among six people who tested positive while aboard; an oncologist from Bend, Oregon, Dr. Stephen Kornfeld, became the de facto head doctor after the ship’s physician fell ill.

A Dutch woman who tested positive died in South Africa on April 26 and a German woman died on May 2. A British man is hospitalized in South Africa and a Swiss man in Switzerland. The ship’s doctor and a guide who tested positive are isolated in the Netherlands.

Health authorities across four continents continue to track and monitor more than two dozen passengers who disembarked on April 24 from at least 12 countries before contact tracing was in place. It was not until May 2 that health authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a passenger.

Three people who shared a flight with a Dutch passenger who later died have tested negative, according to Harald Wychgel, spokesperson for the Dutch National Institute for Public Health.

The EU health agency has classified all passengers on the vessel as high-risk contacts. Hantavirus can cause life-threatening illness and typically spreads when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings. The Andes virus variant identified in this outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases.

Symptoms usually appear between one and eight weeks after exposure. The outbreak has been linked to a landfill site in the southernmost tip of Argentina that is popular with birdwatchers; Dr. Kornfeld had participated in bird-watching excursions during the cruise.

““It just kind of escalated to within 24 hours after I stepped in. One of the patients died and the other two, the physician and one of the other staff members, were getting progressively sicker, and then the first news of hantavirus came out.””

““Right now, there’s nobody on board that has any symptoms, including passengers and crew, and that’s great news.””