Sawt Falasteen - Canary Islands brace for arrival of hantavirus-hit cruise ship

The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius is expected to reach waters off Tenerife at dawn, with WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also due on the archipelago to help coordinate the ship's evacuation.

Three passengers from the ship -- a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman -- have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.

The only hantavirus type that can transmit from person to person -- the Andes virus -- has been confirmed among those who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.

At the port of Granadilla de Abona, residents told AFP they were uneasy. "After Covid, anything involving a virus makes people afraid," a local said.

Regional authorities have refused to allow the vessel to dock. Instead, it will remain offshore while passengers are screened and evacuated between midday Sunday and Monday -- the only window health officials say the weather will allow.

The WHO said Friday it had confirmed six cases out of eight suspected ones. There are no suspected cases remaining on the ship.

The ship is sailing from Cape Verde, where three infected people had already been evacuated earlier in the week.

Before its arrival, Spanish health and interior ministers are due to brief the public in Madrid, followed by a meeting between Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the WHO chief. They are then expected to travel to the Canary Islands later on Saturday.

- Not another Covid -

The WHO has tried to reassure the public, saying the risk of wider spread was "absolutely low".

"This is a dangerous virus, but only to the person who's really infected," WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a press briefing in Geneva, adding the outbreak was "not a new Covid".

The cruise ship is expected to arrive in the Canary Islands on Sunday between 0300 and 0500 GMT, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia Gomez said on Saturday.

After being examined on board, passengers will be taken on smaller boats and transferred by bus to the airport. There, they will be flown back to their home countries, including to the United States, Britain, and France.

"Neither the luggage nor the body of the deceased person will be disembarked in the Canary Islands -- they will remain on board with part of the crew," she said, adding that the ship would continue on its way to the Netherlands.

The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.

Provincial health official Juan Petrina said there was an "almost zero chance" the Dutch man linked to the outbreak contracted the disease in Ushuaia based on the virus's incubation period, among other factors.

- Tracking and tracing -

Health authorities in several countries have been tracking passengers who had already disembarked and anyone who may have come into contact with them.

A flight attendant on the Dutch airline KLM, who came into contact with an infected passenger from the cruise ship and later showed mild symptoms, tested negative for hantavirus, the WHO said Friday.

The passenger -- the wife of the first person to die in the outbreak -- had briefly been on a plane bound from Johannesburg to the Netherlands on April 25, but was removed before take-off.

She died the following day in a Johannesburg hospital.

Spanish authorities said a woman on that flight was being tested for hantavirus, having developed symptoms at home in eastern Spain. She is in isolation in hospital, said health secretary Javier Padilla.

"This is a pretty unlikely case," he told reporters, saying she had been two rows behind the woman who died.

Two Singapore residents who had been on the ship tested negative for the disease but would remain in quarantine, the city state's authorities said Friday.

British health authorities also said Friday there was a suspected case on Tristan da Cunha, one of the world's most isolated settlements with around 220 people.

I.Matar--SF-PST