Hantavirus Ship Heads for Canary Islands as Patients Evacuated
(Bloomberg) — A vessel that’s grappling with a deadly outbreak of hantavirus evacuated three people suspected of carrying the pathogen on Wednesday and will head toward Spain’s Canary Islands and offload the roughly 150 passengers still on board.
The MV Hondius left Cape Verde, off Africa’s west coast, on Wednesday. It will likely arrive at the Granadilla de Abona port in Tenerife on Saturday, Spanish Health Minister Mónica García told reporters.
“All passengers and crew who remain on the ship as of today are asymptomatic,” García said. “Unless a medical condition prevents it, all foreign passengers will be repatriated,” following a protocol led by the European Commission with support from the World Health Organization. The 13 Spanish passengers and a crew member will be taken to a military hospital in Madrid for quarantine.
The Canary Islands’ government — which oversees health care in the archipelago — said it hasn’t received an official request from Spain’s central administration for the ship to dock, with regional President Fernando Clavijo seeking an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
“We don’t know why passengers have to spend three days sailing to a Canary port when they could be evacuated by air from Praia International Airport” in Cape Verde, Clavijo said on TVE, the Spanish public television channel.
Although evacuations from the ship have taken place today, “the overall public-health risk remains low,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X.
People can become infected with hantavirus by inhaling contaminated particles, often in enclosed spaces with rodent droppings. The ship departed southern Argentina in early April and visited remote islands in the South Atlantic before the outbreak emerged.
Severe cases can lead to hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, causing fluid buildup in the lungs. Early symptoms resemble flu but can worsen quickly. The overall public risk is considered low, as person-to-person transmission is unusual.
The first patient, a Dutch man, and his wife traveled in South America before boarding the ship in Argentina on April 1. Both have since died.
Swiss doctors are treating a patient who returned from a trip on the Hondius to South America at the end of April at the University Hospital Zurich.
The patient tested positive for the Andes variant of the respiratory virus — the only strain capable of rare human-to-human transmission — and is in isolation, while his asymptomatic wife, who accompanied him on the trip, is self-isolating as a precaution.
The Swiss government said in a statement on Wednesday that the contagion risk to the public is low and it considers “the occurrence of further cases in Switzerland unlikely.”
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa — where one evacuated patient is in intensive care — also identified the Andes variant, underscoring concerns among health officials investigating the cluster of infections and deaths linked to the Dutch-flagged vessel.
South Africa has recorded 62 people linked to the outbreak, either arrivals in the country or local contacts, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said. Of these, 42 have been traced so far, with none diagnosed with the virus. Contact tracing is continuing, and those identified will be monitored until the incubation period — which ranges from one to six weeks — has passed.
The WHO has identified eight medical cases linked to the cruise — five suspected and three laboratory-confirmed — including three deaths.
Passengers, crew and expedition staff from 23 different countries are isolating on the Hondius.
–With assistance from Bastian Benrath-Wright, Jason Gale, Marthe Fourcade, Paul Richardson and Madison Muller.
(Updates ship’s location in second paragraph.)
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