MADRID, May 11 — An American citizen and a French woman evacuated from the cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak have tested positive, officials said, as the repatriation operation continued today. 

Following the positive test results, Spain defended the rigour of its sanitary measures during the complex evacuation yesterday of 94 people of 19 different nationalities from the MV Hondius, which is moored in the Canary Islands.

The Dutch-flagged vessel has been at the centre of global concern after three passengers died following an outbreak of the rare virus, which usually spreads among rodents and for which no cure exists.

Health officials have insisted that the risk to global public health is rare and dismissed comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The French woman, one of five evacuees from France placed in isolation in Paris, started to feel unwell on Sunday night, and “tests came back positive”, Health Minister Stephanie Rist said today. 

The US health department said one American national evacuated from the ship had “mild symptoms” and that another had tested positive for the Andes virus, the only hantavirus strain that is transmissible between humans.

Spain’s health ministry said “all measures” had been taken to stop the virus spreading during the evacuations, in which medical teams escorted passengers from the ship to an airport on the island of Tenerife under close supervision and following health checks.

It said the French patient “started to feel unwell during the flight and not while she was on the ship”.

The US citizen who tested positive “did not show symptoms when they were in Cape Verde”, where the MV Hondius stopped before reaching the Canary Islands, the ministry said.

“However, the US authorities have decided to treat the case as positive. For that reason, they requested a separate evacuation, which was carried out in a separate boat.”

Final flights to leave 

In all, eight cases have been confirmed in the outbreak, and two more are listed as “probable”, according to the World Health Organization and national health authorities, with citizens of six countries affected.

Other suspected cases and potential close contacts with infected people are being investigated, with health authorities in several countries tracking passengers who had already disembarked from the ship, plus anyone who may have come into contact with them.

Rist said 22 more close contacts had been identified among French nationals, including eight people who had travelled on an April 25 flight between Saint Helena and Johannesburg, and 14 more on a flight between Johannesburg and Amsterdam.

A Dutch woman passenger of the MV Hondius who died of hantavirus was on the flight to Johannesburg and later briefly boarded a flight to Amsterdam but was removed before take-off.

Two more repatriation flights to Australia and the Netherlands are planned on Monday to complete the evacuation of most of the ship’s almost 150 passengers and crew.

After refuelling, the ship is scheduled to leave Tenerife for the Netherlands at 7 pm with a skeleton crew.

“There are still some citizens from the Netherlands and Australia, and hopefully we can even finish before the scheduled time,” Spanish minister Angel Victor Torres told public radio RNE.

The MV Hondius left Argentina, where hantavirus is endemic, on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.

The World Health Organization believes the first infection occurred before the start of the voyage, followed by transmission between humans on board the vessel.

But Argentine health officials have questioned whether the outbreak originated in Ushuaia, based on the virus’s weeks-long incubation period and other factors.— AFP

WASHINGTON, May 11 — The US Department of Health and Human Services said yesterday that one of the 17 Americans being repatriated from a hantavirus-struck luxury cruise ship has tested mildly positive for the Andes strain of the ‌virus while a second has mild symptoms. All the US citizens are being airlifted to the United States, and the two passengers with symptoms are travelling in the plane’s biocontainment units, HHS added. The second symptomatic passenger has not yet been confirmed as having the virus.

Hantaviruses are a group of viruses that are usually spread by rodents but in rare cases can be transmitted person to person. Health authorities have said the risk of the virus spreading ‌is low.

Eight people no longer on the MV Hondius have ⁠fallen ill, according to a World ⁠Health Organisation update from Friday, with six of ⁠them confirmed to have ⁠contracted the virus. ⁠A Dutch couple and a German national have died.

The Andes strain of hantavirus, identified in the ship’s outbreak, can cause severe lung ⁠illness that can be fatal in up to 50 per cent of cases, according to the WHO.

The US State Department’s airlift will transport passengers to the ASPR Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Centre (RESPTC) at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre in Omaha, Nebraska, and the ⁠passenger with mild symptoms will be taken to a second RESPTC, the HHS said.

On arrival at the facilities, each individual ⁠will undergo clinical assessment and receive care based on their condition, HHS added.

Spain ⁠and ⁠France have evacuated their citizens from the MV Hondius, which is anchored near Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, officials said. Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, ‌Turkey, the UK and Ireland are also flying home nationals who were on the ship. — Reuters

WASHINGTON, May 10 — The World Health Organization said Saturda it considered everyone on board a cruise ship hit with a deadly hantavirus outbreak as “high-risk” contacts who should be actively monitored for 42 days.

There are nearly 150 people on board the MV Hondius at the centre of the outbreak that has killed three people, which is heading towards the waters off Tenerife.

“We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact,” WHO’s epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director Maria Van Kerkhove told a social media event.

Currently, “there’s nobody on board that has any symptoms”, she said, adding though that “active monitoring and follow-up of all the passengers and crew who disembark for a 42-day period” was recommended.

Van Kerkove stressed that the risk to the general public and to the people of the Canary Islands, where the Hondius is expected to anchor on Sunday, remained “low”.

Three passengers from the ship—a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman—have died, out of eight confirmed and suspected cases of the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.

The only hantavirus type that can transmit from person to person—the Andes virus—has been confirmed among the six cases who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is heading to Tenerife to help coordinate the evacuation.

Van Kerkhove said the United Nations health agency was coordinating with member states—in particular Spain and the Netherlands, the ship’s operator, and experts around the world on the best way forward.

Yesterday, WHO had briefed countries with nationals on board the ship about the plans for “safe and dignified disembarkment”, she said.

The idea, she said, was for anyone who might be showing symptoms to “immediately go to a medical evacuation plane and be taken to the Netherlands for care”.

Countries were organising planes to take all those without symptoms back home, with some countries, like the United States and Canada, discussing sharing a plane, Van Kerkhove said.

Everyone coming off the ship would meanwhile need to be monitored for 42 days, starting from their last point of exposure with a confirmed or suspected hantavirus case, she said.

That means, she said, “the clock has already started ticking”. — AFP

MADRID, May 10 — A cruise ship hit with a deadly hantavirus outbreak is headed for Spain’s Canary Islands, where most of the nearly 150 people on board will be evacuated and flown home after weeks at sea.

The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius is expected to reach waters off Tenerife at dawn on today, where WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is due to help coordinate the ship’s evacuation.

Three passengers from the ship—a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman—have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.

The only hantavirus type that can transmit from person to person—the Andes virus—has been confirmed among those who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.

“We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact,” WHO’s epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director Maria Van Kerkhove said yesterday. 

But the risk to the general public and the people of the Canaries remained low, she added.

Tedros, who arrived in Spain yesterday, gave the same assurance and thanked the people of Tenerife for their “solidarity”.

“I need you to hear me clearly,” Tedros wrote in an open letter to the people of Tenerife on Saturday: “This is not another Covid.”

After arriving in Tenerife, he said he was confident the operation would be a success. “Spain is ready and prepared,” he told reporters.

At the port of Granadilla de Abona, AFP journalists saw white tents had been sent up along the quay and members of the civil guard had secured part of the port.

Despite the situation, daily life appeared largely normal: some people were swimming, others shopping at the market or sitting at cafe terraces.

“There are worries there could be a danger, but honestly I don’t see people being very concerned,” said David Parada, a lottery vendor.

Regional authorities have refused to allow the vessel to dock. Instead, it will remain offshore while passengers are screened and evacuated between Sunday and Monday—the only window health officials say the weather will allow.

Cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said it expected the ship to arrive at 0430 GMT and that “all guests and a limited number of crew members are expected to begin to disembark... from around 8:00 am local time (0700 GMT).

“Once disembarked, they will be transferred immediately to their allocated aircraft.”

The WHO said Friday it had confirmed six cases out of eight suspected ones. There are no suspected cases remaining on the ship.

The MV Hondius is sailing from Cape Verde, where three infected people had already been evacuated earlier in the week.

Tracking and tracing 

In Madrid, Spain’s health and interior ministers insisted there would be “no contact” with the local population, and that passengers would leave “by nationality groups”.

“All areas (the passengers) pass through will be sealed off,” the interior minister said, adding a maritime exclusion zone would be in force around the vessel.

The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.

Provincial health official Juan Petrina said there was an “almost zero chance” the Dutch man linked to the outbreak contracted the disease in Ushuaia based on the virus’s incubation period, among other factors.

Health authorities in several countries have been tracking passengers who had already disembarked and anyone who may have come into contact with them.

A flight attendant on the Dutch airline KLM, who came into contact with an infected passenger from the cruise ship and later showed mild symptoms, tested negative for hantavirus, the WHO said Friday.

The passenger—the wife of the first person to die in the outbreak—had briefly been on a plane bound from Johannesburg to the Netherlands on April 25, but was removed before take-off.

She died the following day in a Johannesburg hospital.

Spanish authorities said a woman on that flight was being tested for hantavirus, having developed symptoms at home in eastern Spain. She is in isolation in hospital, said health secretary Javier Padilla.

Two Singapore residents who had been on the ship tested negative for the disease but would remain in quarantine, the city state’s authorities said Friday.

British health authorities also said Friday there was a suspected case on Tristan da Cunha, one of the world’s most isolated settlements with around 220 people. — AFP

GENEVA, May 9 — There are six confirmed cases of hantavirus so far out of eight suspected ones following an outbreak on a cruise ship, the World Health Organization said today. 

“As of 8 May, a total of eight cases, including three deaths (case fatality ratio 38 per cent), have been reported. Six cases have been laboratory-confirmed as hantavirus infections, with all identified as Andes virus (ANDV),” it said in a statement.

“WHO assesses the risk to the global population posed by this event as low and will continue to monitor the epidemiological situation and update the risk assessment”.

“The risk for passengers and crew on the ship is considered moderate,” it added. — AFP

SANTIAGO, May 8 — Two cruise ship passengers who died of hantavirus were not infected in Chile when they traveled through the country, the Chilean health ministry said yesterday.

A hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship has triggered a global health scare after three passengers died of the rare respiratory disease.

Two of the victims, a Dutch married couple, arrived in Argentina on November 27, 2025, then traveled to Chile and Uruguay before returning to Argentina on March 27 this year to board the ship on April 1, according to Argentine officials.

The pair entered Chile on January 7.

They traveled around “during a period that does not correspond to the incubation time, so exposure to the virus would not have occurred in our country,” the Chilean health ministry said in a statement.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the incubation period for hantavirus can be up to six weeks.

The United Nations agency yesterday reported five confirmed hantavirus cases and three suspected cases.

The disease is usually spread from infected rodents, typically through urine, droppings and saliva.

The Andes virus is found in South America, and is the only strain of hantavirus with documented human-to-human transmission.

Chilean authorities said the last infection with this strain in the country occurred in 2019. — AFP