Spain readies for evacuations as a hantavirus-hit cruise ship heads for
the Canary Islands
[May 08, 2026]
By SUMAN NAISHADHAM
MADRID (AP) — Spanish authorities on Friday were preparing to receive
more than 140 passengers and crew members on board a hantavirus-stricken
cruise ship headed for the Canary Islands, where health officials have
said they will perform careful evacuations.
The vessel is expected to reach the Spanish island of Tenerife, off the
coast of West Africa, on Saturday or Sunday.
“They will arrive at a completely isolated, cordoned-off area,” said
Virginia Barcones, Spain's head of emergency services, on Thursday.
The MV Hondius is a Dutch-flagged vessel and Dutch officials said Friday
they were also in close contact with the ship's owner and authorities of
countries whose citizens are on board.
The United States has agreed to send a plane to the Canary Islands to
repatriate its 17 citizens from the cruise ship. The British government
also said it will charter a plane to evacuate the nearly two dozen
British nationals onboard.
At least three passengers have died, and several other people are sick.
The World Health Organization considers the risk to the wider public
from the outbreak as low, and on Friday, confirmed that a flight
attendant on a plane briefly boarded by an infected cruise passenger had
tested negative.
Her possible infection had raised concerns about the virus’s potential
transmissibility. Christian Lindmeier, a WHO spokesman, said Friday her
negative result should alleviate panic.
“The risk remains absolutely low,” he said of the virus outbreak. “This
is not a new COVID.”
Hantavirus is usually spread by the inhalation of contaminated rodent
droppings and isn’t easily transmitted between people. Symptoms usually
show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
None of the remaining passengers or crew on the ship is currently
symptomatic, the Netherlands-based Oceanwide Expeditions cruise ship
company said Thursday.
Countries scramble to track passengers who disembarked
Health authorities across four continents were continuing to track down
and monitor passengers who disembarked the ship before the deadly
outbreak was detected. They are also trying 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, Dutch officials and the ship's
operator said Thursday.
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 It wasn’t until May 2 that health
authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a ship passenger, the WHO
said.
The KLM flight attendant who tested negative for the virus was
working on a flight headed from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on April
25, and had later fallen ill. She was taken to an isolation ward at
an Amsterdam hospital on Thursday.
The cruise passenger briefly aboard that flight — a Dutch woman
whose husband died on the ship — was too ill to stay on the
international flight to Europe and was taken off the plane in
Johannesburg, where she died.
The Dutch public health service is currently undertaking contract
tracing on passengers from the flight who had contact with the ill
woman before she left the plane.
On Friday, U.K. health authorities said a third British national is
suspected to have the hantavirus.
The U.K. Health Security Agency said the suspected case is on
Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory in the south
Atlantic where the ship stopped in April.
There was no word on the person's condition.
Two other Britons who were on the ship have been confirmed to have
the virus. One is hospitalized in the Netherlands and the other in
South Africa.
Authorities in South Africa are working to trace contacts of any
passengers who previously got off the ship. They have focused mainly
on an April 25 flight from the remote island of St. Helena in the
South Atlantic to Johannesburg, the day after some passengers
disembarked on the island.
Spanish authorities reassure public
Spanish officials sought to reassure those with concerns about the
evacuation of the MV Hondius in the Canary Islands.
Barcones said passengers would be evacuated from the ship only to go
directly to the airport for their country of origin, and would
travel in isolated and guarded vehicles. The parts of the airport
they travel through will also be cordoned-off, she said.
Still, some Spaniards drew parallels to the early months of 2020,
despite the WHO and Spanish health experts stressing the low risk of
the outbreak turning into something much bigger.
“The people of the Canary Islands, the men and women living there,
can rest assured that there will be absolutely no possibility of
contact at any time," Barcones said.
___
Associated Press writers Stefanie Dazio in Berlin and Molly Quell in
The Hague, Netherlands, contributed.
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