Passengers have begun evacuating the MV Hondius cruise ship that was hit by a rare hantavirus outbreak, boarding planes after the ship is docked in Spain’s Canary Islands.
The Dutch cruise ship, carrying about 150 people from 23 different nations, landed in the Spanish island of Tenerife on Sunday morning to begin disembarking its passengers and crew from the vessel. Eight people aboard the ship were diagnosed with the Andes strain of the hantavirus, the only strain thought capable of human-to-human transmission. Three people on the ship have died in the outbreak.
The passengers and about 60 crew members from the ship will disembark by smaller vessels, which will bring them ashore to confined buses that will then bring them to the Tenerife South Airport. Countries have sent quarantine evacuation planes to pick up their individual passengers and repatriate them.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent a team of specialists to the Canary Islands to evaluate 17 U.S. passengers disembarking the ship. These passengers will then be flown home on “U.S. government medical repatriation” flights set to land at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, according to the CDC. They will then quarantine at the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.
Six Americans have already disembarked the vessel and arrived back in the United States, though none showed any signs of illness.
Director-General of the World Health Organization Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sent a rare community-wide message to the people of Tenerife on Saturday before the cruise ship arrived that “the risk to you, living your daily life in Tenerife, is low.”
“I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another COVID. The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low. My colleagues and I have said this unequivocally, and I will say it again to you now,” Ghebreyesus wrote.
Acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya also told Americans on Saturday that the outbreak will not be another COVID-19 pandemic.
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“This is, again, not like COVID, and the CDC has been working very closely with our international partners, our state and local partners,” Bhattacharya told Fox News.
Hantaviruses, spread by rodents like mice, can cause illnesses that can result in low blood pressure, low oxygen levels, and death by organ failure if they are left untreated. The human-to-human spread of the Andes strain is typically transmitted by extremely close contact with an affected individual.