{"id":20162,"date":"2026-05-09T20:01:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T20:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/20162\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T20:01:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T20:01:16","slug":"hantavirus-infected-ship-arriving-at-canary-islands-between-4-a-m-and-6-a-m-local-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/20162\/","title":{"rendered":"Hantavirus-infected ship arriving at Canary Islands between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. local time"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hantavirus-infected\u00a0MV Hondius<\/a>\u00a0is estimated to arrive near the port of Granadilla, on the island of Tenerife, between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. local time Sunday, Spain\u2019s Health Minister said.<\/p>\n

The vessel will not be allowed to dock in the Canary Islands\u00a0when it approaches\u00a0Sunday\u00a0\u2014 and instead will be left floating just offshore, as hazmat-clad health teams swarm aboard to evaluate and\u00a0evacuate\u00a0the passengers and crew back to two dozen countries.<\/p>\n

It comes after a\u00a0dramatic week-long showdown<\/a>\u00a0between the\u00a0conservative local leader<\/a>\u00a0and Spain\u2019s socialist prime minister, over the decision to follow orders from the World Health Organization to let the cursed ship in.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Crew members of the MV Hondius wait to speak to epidemiologists. AP<\/p>\n

The 147 passengers and 60 crew members\u00a0will be transferred to the port, through a\u00a0\u201ccompletely isolated, cordoned-off area,\u201d\u00a0wearing full protective garb, and bussed to the airport, with evacuations to begin within 24 hours of the ship\u2019s arrival.<\/p>\n

The head of the World Health Organization,\u00a0Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,\u00a0arrived\u00a0on the Canary Islands\u00a0Saturday to oversee the evacuation\u00a0and\u00a0attempted to reassure petrified locals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 14 Spanish nationals aboard will be the first evacuated and flown to a military\u00a0hospital in Madrid to quarantine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A team of epidemiologists and medical professionals deployed by the Centers for Disease Control\u00a0will\u00a0escort the 17 Americans on board the ship.<\/p>\n

The agency alerted doctors in the United States to prepare for potential imported cases of the hantavirus linked to the\u00a0rat virus-stricken cruise ship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Medical workers awaited the passengers from the MV Hondius Friday. Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The 17 Americans will be taken to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha to quarantine. University of Nebraska Medical Center<\/p>\n

In an alert issued Saturday, the CDC warned early symptoms could mimic the flu and that testing should be repeated in the first 72 hours \u2014 while insisting the risk of broad spread to the US was still \u201cextremely unlikely at this time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The US Department of State is chartering a government medical repatriation flight that will bring the 17 American passengers to the Air Force One Base in Omaha, Nebraska.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A microscopic image of liver tissue specimen taken from a hantavirus patient. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

After initially saying Friday they would be\u00a0transported to the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska, where another CDC team is being deployed, to isolate \u2013\u00a0a CDC official Saturday told ABC News\u00a0\u201cwe are not quarantining anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

The passengers will be evaluated upon arrival in Nebraska, but won\u2019t be tested if they don\u2019t show symptoms,\u00a0the CDC official said.<\/p>\n

Three people have died, including Dutch ornithologists\u00a0Leo and Mirjam Schilperoord<\/a>\u00a0and a German passenger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The stricken ship will not be allowed to dock when it arrives at the Canary Islands. REUTERS<\/p>\n

The Schilperoords\u2019 bodies have been repatriated to the Netherlands, but the German woman\u2019s body remains on the ship, and will stay aboard with a handful of crew members after Sunday.<\/p>\n

They will continue the voyage to\u00a0the Netherlands, from where the body will be repatriated and the ship disinfected.<\/p>\n

Five other cases have been confirmed by the WHO so far, with more suspected. The confirmed cases include\u00a0three passengers airlifted from Cape Verde to the Netherlands on May 6, including 56-year-old British\u00a0crew member Martin Antsee<\/a>,\u00a0who\u00a0remain in the hospital as of Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Passengers embarked on the doomed cruise April 1.<\/p>\n

Another was a 69-year-old British man, a passenger, who was airlifted from Ascension Island on April 27 to an intensive care unit in Johannesburg \u2014 along with his American partner, who is reportedly asymptomatic.<\/p>\n

United Kingdom authorities confirmed Friday that a local on the remote island of\u00a0Tristan da Cunha<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 where the ship made its first scheduled stop on April 15 \u2014 was being treated for a suspected case of the rodent-borne virus.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A passenger takes a photo of the empty deck on the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship on May 6, 2026. AP<\/p>\n

Hantavirus \u2013 the disease\u00a0that killed Gene Hackman\u2019s wife Betsy Arakawa<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 is usually spread through rodent droppings, but this strain, the Andes virus, can be spread between people and\u00a0carries a mortality rate of nearly 40%.<\/a><\/p>\n

Argentina experienced a spike in cases last year, logging 86 infections and 28 deaths in 2025 \u2014 one of its deadliest tallies in years, with wildfires in Patagonia suspected of pushing rodents closer to towns.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A passenger gets some water from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship. AP<\/p>\n

In January, the country\u2019s National Epidemiological Bulletin determined that \u201cwith a total of 58 confirmed cases, the country is at the outbreak threshold\u201d for hantavirus.<\/p>\n

Argentinian officials dispatched a team to the city of Ushuaia this week to capture and analyze rat samples for the virus.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Adry Torres<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hantavirus-infected\u00a0MV Hondius\u00a0is estimated to arrive near the port of Granadilla, on the island of Tenerife, between 4…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[647,10795,9586,17,1924],"class_list":{"0":"post-20162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-canary-islands","9":"tag-crew-members","10":"tag-cruise-ship","11":"tag-spain","12":"tag-world-health-organization"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}