Cruise ship stricken by hantavirus reaches Canary Islands, where passengers, some crew, will be evacuated

A Dutch-flagged cruise ship was Deadly hantavirus outbreak achieve canary islands spain Early Sunday morning, health officials will begin the complex process of evacuating passengers and much of the crew and returning them to their respective countries.

The MV Hondius, currently carrying nearly 150 people from more than 15 countries, including 17 Americans, set sail from Cape Verde earlier this week for the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, after Spain agreed to take delivery of the ship.

Reuters video showed the ship approaching the port of Granadilla. According to an AFP reporter, the Hondius was escorted by a Spanish Civil Guard ship.

The World Health Organization said that so far no one on board has developed symptoms.

There at least Nine confirmed or suspected hantavirus cases have been linked to the outbreak, including three deaths, a Dutch couple and a German woman.

Oceanwide Expeditions, the ship’s operator, said all passengers and some of the approximately 60 crew members would begin evacuating the ship on Sunday using a launch vessel that can carry up to five to 10 people. The WHO and several other health organizations are coordinating the evacuation. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus traveled to Tenerife ahead of the ship’s arrival.

Once the men disembark, a skeleton crew will take supplies and begin the journey to Rotterdam, Netherlands, which is expected to take about five days, Oceanwide Expeditions said.

Once off the Hondez, the Americans will fly back to the United States on a plane dispatched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was sending a team of epidemiologists and medical professionals to the Canary Islands to “conduct an exposure risk assessment for each U.S. passenger and provide recommendations on the level of surveillance required.”

The medical repatriation flight will land at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, and the Americans will be flown to a special biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Michael Wardman, medical director of the state quarantine unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said every American will have his or her own room during quarantine for an unspecified amount of time.

Hantaviruses are a group of diseases that are transmitted to humans through rodent urine, feces or saliva, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can take up to eight weeks after exposure for symptoms to appear.

The WHO said the Andean strain found in Latin America is the only one known to be able to spread the virus through person-to-person contact, and Ghebreyesus assessed the risk to the public as “low,” an assessment echoed by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Hantavirus is not spread by people without symptoms, transmission requires close contact, and the risk to the American public is very low,” Bhattacharya said in a statement Wednesday.

The source of the epidemic is still under investigation. However, Ghebreyesus said this week that before boarding the ship, the Dutch couple who died – a 70-year-old man and his 69-year-old wife – are believed to have spent weeks traveling through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a birding trip in areas where rodents known to carry the Andes virus are present.

The WHO said the man developed symptoms on April 6 and died on the ship on April 11, but no samples were taken because his symptoms were similar to other respiratory viruses and hantavirus was not suspected at the time.

When the ship docked at St. Helena in British territorial waters, his wife also came ashore. The World Health Organization said she developed severe symptoms on a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, on April 25 and died in South Africa the next day. Tests confirmed she had hantavirus infection.

The German woman developed symptoms on April 28 and died on the ship on May 2, according to the World Health Organization.

This week, three other patients were flown from the ship to the Netherlands for emergency medical care, and a Swiss man who began showing symptoms after disembarking is being treated in Zurich. A British man was flown to South Africa for medical evacuation, while another British national who disembarked was hospitalized on the British territory of Tristan da Cunha.

Oceanwide Expeditions said 32 passengers from about a dozen countries boarded the Hondius in St. Helena, including a Dutch woman who died days later. Those U.S. passengers who returned to the U.S. before the outbreak was discovered were being monitored State health agencies in California, Georgia, Texas, Virginia and Arizona are responsible.

The Hondius departed from Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 and traveled to various islands in the South Atlantic from April 21 to 24, including South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Tristan da Cunha, Gough Island, and then St. Helena.

The ship then anchored off the coast of Cape Verde, a West African island, for several days before heading to the Canary Islands.