Passengers and crew from a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak were evacuated on Sunday after the vessel anchored off Spain’s Canary Islands. Global health officials have sought to calm fears about the passengers’ return to their home countries by vowing to closely monitor any signs of disease.
The ship, the MV Hondius, arrived at the port of Granadilla de Abona in Tenerife, the largest of the islands, early on Sunday morning, one month after a person died on board.
Mónica García, Spain’s health minister, told reporters in Tenerife that everyone on the ship was asymptomatic.
Health officials boarded the vessel to conduct an epidemiological evaluation, including assessing temperatures and symptoms, but they did not test anyone, she said.
Passengers and crew members began disembarking in small groups on Sunday, wearing masks and blue personal protective equipment. Many carried what appeared to be white plastic bags. People were allowed to take only essential items, including a cellphone and documentation, Spanish authorities said.
The Spanish authorities said evacuations on chartered or military flights were expected to continue through Monday evening.
Ms. García said at midday on Sunday that 13 Spanish passengers and one Spanish crew member had boarded a flight to Madrid and that five French citizens were taken to the airport after disembarking.
Ms. García said all planes scheduled for Sunday had departed for their destinations. “It is a source of pride to be part of a country that has carried out this operation,” she said.
Five French citizens arrived home on Sunday evening, but one of them developed symptoms during the flight, Sébastien Lecornu, France’s prime minister, said on X.
Mr. Lecornu said that the five passengers were immediately placed in strict isolation, and that they will undergo more testing and a health assessment.
In a statement on Sunday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the American citizens aboard the ship would be transported to the Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center/Nebraska Medicine in Omaha, Neb.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday that though the center has a quarantine unit, passengers would not be quarantined, but would instead be monitored and assessed for a period of 42 days, in some cases at their homes, in coordination with local jurisdictions and other government agencies.
It was not immediately clear how many U.S. passengers might remain at the center in Nebraska and how many would be sent home to be monitored.
There were about 150 people aboard the ship when it arrived at the Canary Islands, including crew members, passengers and four medical staff members who boarded the vessel when it was anchored off the coast of Cape Verde, an island archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean.
The World Health Organization has said that the risk of the outbreak to the public is low.
As the ship neared the Canary Islands on Saturday, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the organization, moved to allay residents’ concerns about the hantavirus, which has rekindled anxieties from the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I know that when you hear the word ‘outbreak’ and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest,” he said in a statement addressed to Tenerife, after the leader of the regional government of the Canary Islands tried to block the arrival because of fears about disease.
“But I need you to hear me clearly: This is not another Covid,” Dr. Tedros added.
Since April 11, three passengers have died and five other people have fallen ill after showing symptoms of hantavirus, a rare family of viruses carried by rodents, according to the W.H.O.
Although human-to-human transmission of the hantavirus is rare, W.H.O. officials said the strain that had infected patients from the ship, called the Andes strain, was the only one known to spread among humans.
The pathogen had been confirmed in six people, the W.H.O. said, including two of the dead. Two other people were “probable cases,” the organization said.
Global health officials were taking steps to stop the virus from spreading, but predicted a “limited” outbreak if public health measures were enacted.
Countries were scrambling to trace people who may have been exposed to the virus and were monitoring people who were on the ship or had contact with sickened passengers.
“We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the W.H.O.’s director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, said on Saturday.
Oceanwide Expeditions, the cruise operator, said on Sunday that once all guests and some of the crew had disembarked, the ship “will bunker and take on necessary supplies” in Tenerife before heading to Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, which was expected to take around five days.
The ship will be disinfected there, Spain’s interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, said on Saturday.
Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.