Spanish Authorities Prepare Evacuation of MV Hondius Passengers as U.S. Plans Nebraska Quarantine

Spanish authorities prepared to receive more than 140 passengers and crew members on board the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius as it headed for the Canary Islands, with health officials planning careful evacuations on arrival.

“Seventeen Americans who are currently on board the Dutch cruise ship enduring a hantavirus outbreak will make their way back to the United States on a repatriation flight arranged by the Department of State”

10News

The ship was expected to arrive on Sunday at the Spanish island of Tenerife, where passengers would be transported to the airport and flown back to their respective countries.

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The U.S. planned an evacuation for 17 Americans, with the CDC sending officials to Tenerife ahead of Hondius’s arrival and the plan to place American passengers into quarantine in Nebraska.

Al Jazeera reported that the passengers would be taken to a “completely isolated, cordoned-off area,” and it quoted the head of Spain’s emergency services, Virginia Barcones, describing the evacuation setup.

The Guardian said the evacuation operation would have to be completed within 24 hours of the vessel reaching Tenerife on Sunday or face delays due to bad weather, with Alfonso Cabello warning that the “only window of opportunity” was around 12 o’clock on Sunday morning.

Multiple outlets described a hantavirus outbreak aboard Hondius, with Al Jazeera saying at least eight people fell ill and that three people had died since the outbreak began.

Al Jazeera also reported that five passengers who left the ship are known to be infected with hantavirus, while cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said there were no people with symptoms of a possible infection on board the ship.

Al Jazeera

Scripps News said three passengers have died and several others became ill since the ship left Argentina on April 1, and it reported that the World Health Organization said the risk to the general public is “very low.”

Scripps News quoted Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove saying, “This is not COVID. This is not influenza. It spreads very, very differently,” and it added that the Andes strain typically requires prolonged exposure rather than casual contact.

The Guardian reported that three people—a Dutch couple and a German national—had died in the outbreak and that four others confirmed to be infected were being treated in hospitals in the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland.

Once Hondius reaches Tenerife, Spanish officials said passengers would be evacuated from the ship and placed in isolation, and the U.S. would send a plane for 17 American passengers to bring them home.

The Guardian said passengers will be evaluated on the ship and will not have any contact with the local population when they are taken from the ship to be repatriated, and it added that in the case of the 14 Spanish nationals onboard they would be transported to a military hospital in Madrid for compulsory quarantine.

UNILAD reported that Nebraska Medicine said, “Nebraska Medicine and UNMC remain in close coordination with national partners regarding the evolving situation with the hantavirus outbreak,” and it said specialized teams including the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit and National Quarantine Unit were staffed and ready.

Al Jazeera described protests and local concern, quoting port workers’ union member Joana Batista saying, “We’re unhappy at the idea of being allowed to work in a port without special safety measures or information when an infected boat is approaching,” while the group Iustitia Europa posted on X that “The Canary Islands cannot become Europe’s health laboratory.”

Infobae said the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus raised the number of confirmed hantavirus cases to five and that the WHO said six cases had been confirmed so far, while it also reported that the U.S. government would send a repatriation aircraft to evacuate 17 American citizens aboard the cruise.