The Dutch-flagged cruise ship MV Hondius arrived in the early hours of Sunday at the port of Granadilla de Abona in Tenerife, in Spain's Canary Islands — a Spanish archipelago in the eastern Atlantic off the coast of northwest Africa — marking the beginning of a complex multinational operation to repatriate more than 100 passengers and crew following a deadly hantavirus outbreak on board. Three passengers have died: a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman. The ship departed Ushuaia, in Argentina's southernmost tip, on 1 April for an Atlantic cruise, and has spent weeks at sea unable to dock as countries refused entry.
The MV Hondius will not be permitted to berth directly at the quay. Instead, it is anchored offshore within a one-nautical-mile security exclusion zone while medical teams board to screen all passengers. Those cleared are being ferried to shore in small boats, divided by nationality, before being transferred by bus to the local airport, where charter and medically-equipped aircraft from at least 23 countries stand ready to fly them home. Spain's health minister Mónica García described the operation as "unprecedented." Spanish nationals face a mandatory quarantine at the Gómez Ulla military hospital in Madrid, while around 30 crew members will remain on board to sail the vessel back to the Netherlands. Dutch passengers are being repatriated to Eindhoven.
The outbreak has been linked to a landfill site near Ushuaia, a birdwatching destination where the virus circulates among rodents. The strain confirmed on board is the Andes virus, the only form of hantavirus known to transmit between humans, albeit with difficulty and only through close contact. The World Health Organization said Friday it had confirmed six cases out of eight suspected, with no suspected cases remaining on the ship. The WHO's epidemic preparedness director Maria Van Kerkhove described all those on board as "high-risk contacts," while stressing that the risk to the general public remained low. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who travelled to Tenerife to oversee the disembarkation, sought to reassure locals in an open letter: "I need you to hear me clearly — this is not another Covid."
The operation has not been without political friction. The president of the Canary Islands said he "won't be calm" until all passengers and crew have left, and port workers staged a noisy protest on Friday outside the regional parliament over safety concerns. Health authorities across several countries have been tracing individuals who disembarked earlier in the voyage. A KLM flight attendant who briefly came into contact with an infected passenger tested negative, and two Singapore residents who had been on the ship also tested negative though remain in quarantine. A suspected case has also been reported on Tristan da Cunha, one of the world's most remote inhabited islands.
Despite underlying anxieties shaped by memories of the Covid-19 pandemic, the mood in Tenerife on Sunday morning appeared largely calm, with residents swimming, shopping, and sitting at café terraces near the port. Hospitals on the island are on heightened alert, with intensive care specialists on standby at the Candelaria hospital and a fully equipped isolation unit prepared. "We are absolutely ready," said chief intensive care doctor Mar Martín. "We've never seen hantavirus before — but it's a virus, with some complications, just like we manage every day."