Spain Prepares to Receive Hantavirus-Affected Cruise Ship in Canary Islands

Spanish authorities on Friday were preparing to receive more than 140 passengers and crew members from a cruise ship carrying hantavirus as it headed for the Canary Islands. The vessel is expected to arrive Sunday at the Spanish island of Tenerife. Passengers will be taken to a completely isolated, cordoned-off area after disembarking, according to the head of Spain’s emergency services.

Both the U.S. and the U.K. have agreed to send planes to evacuate their citizens from the cruise ship. The company reported on Thursday that there were no people with symptoms of a possible infection on board the Dutch-flagged ship, the MV Hondius.

Three people have died since the outbreak began and five passengers who left the ship are known to be infected with hantavirus. The World Health Organization considers the risk to the wider public from the outbreak as low. On Friday, the WHO said a flight attendant on a plane briefly boarded by an infected cruise passenger has tested negative for hantavirus.

The negative result should ease concerns about the virus’s potential transmissibility, a WHO spokesman said. “The risk remains absolutely low. This is not a new COVID,” the spokesman stated. Hantavirus is usually spread by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and isn’t easily transmitted between people.

The Andes virus detected in the cruise ship outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.

Health authorities across four continents were continuing to track down and monitor more than two dozen passengers who disembarked the ship before the deadly outbreak was detected. Officials were also working to trace others who may have come into contact with them since then.

On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing. It wasn’t until May 2 that health authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a ship passenger.

The KLM flight attendant who tested negative was working on a flight from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on April 25. The cruise passenger who briefly boarded that flight was a Dutch woman whose husband died on the ship; she was taken off the plane in Johannesburg where she later died.

On Friday, U.K. health authorities said a third British national who had been a passenger on the ship is suspected of being infected with hantavirus. The person is on the island of Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory where the ship stopped in April.

Spanish health officials said Friday a woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante has symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection and is being tested. She was a passenger on the same flight as the Dutch woman who died in Johannesburg.

Two other Britons who were on the ship have been confirmed to have the virus.

Once the ship reaches Tenerife, passengers will be evacuated in small boats to buses only after their repatriation flights are ready. Passengers will be transported in isolated and guarded vehicles, and the parts of the airport they travel through will be cordoned off.

Spain has requested medically equipped aircraft in case passengers report symptoms in order to avoid any contact with the general population. The U.S. agreed to send a plane to repatriate the 17 Americans on board. Those passengers will be quarantined at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine.

The dedicated biocontainment unit previously was used to treat Ebola patients and some of the first COVID-19 patients. “We are prepared for situations exactly like this,” the CEO of Nebraska Medicine said in a statement Friday. The British government also said it will charter a plane to evacuate the nearly two dozen British nationals onboard.