Sawt Falasteen - Hantavirus ship evacuation nears completion as 94 flown home

Three passengers from the MV Hondius -- 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.

No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is endemic in Argentina, where the ship departed in April.

But health officials have stressed that the risk for global public health is low and played down comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The operation evacuated 94 people of 19 different nationalities on Sunday, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia announced on the island of Tenerife after what she called a "pretty intense" day.

Spanish officials said the evacuation of most of the ship's nearly 150 passengers and crew, which include 23 nationalities, would continue until the final repatriation flights to Australia and the Netherlands on Monday afternoon.

The ship will refuel in the morning and is expected to depart for the Netherlands with around 30 crew at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT) on Monday.

On Sunday, passengers wearing blue medical suits began disembarking the Dutch-flagged vessel onto smaller boats to reach the small industrial port of Granadilla on Tenerife, AFP journalists saw.

The evacuees then boarded Spanish army buses and travelled to Tenerife South airport in a convoy, with a protective board separating the driver from the passengers.

The evacuees changed into new protective equipment before boarding their repatriation flights.

"Everything is going well," French evacuee Roland Seitre told AFP just before taking off, saying "everyone was great" during the disembarkation.

- Race against time -

A plane arrived in the Netherlands with dozens of people, including Belgian, Greek, German, Guatemalan and Argentine citizens, while flights for Canadian, Turkish, British, Irish and US nationals also left.

Canary Islands authorities have warned that the operation must be completed by Monday, when adverse weather conditions will force the ship to leave.

The Atlantic archipelago's regional government has consistently resisted taking in the ship, which was only authorised to anchor offshore instead of docking in the port when it arrived early on Sunday morning.

The central government has insisted there will be no contact with the population in Tenerife.

Garcia told reporters on Tenerife shortly before the operation began that all passengers were asymptomatic and underwent a final medical assessment before their disembarkation.

But one of five French people flown back to France was showing hantavirus symptoms, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu wrote on X, saying all those evacuees "have immediately been placed in strict isolation until further notice".

The World Health Organization recommends a 42-day quarantine and "active follow-up", including daily checks for symptoms such as fever, the UN body's epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director, Maria Van Kerkhove, said in Geneva.

But a top US health official said American passengers will not necessarily be quarantined at a specialised centre in the state of Nebraska.

Depending on the estimated risk, passengers can choose to go home "without exposing other people on the way", said Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was on Tenerife to help supervise the evacuations, said that policy "may have risks".

- International concern -

The only hantavirus type that is transmissible between humans -- the Andes virus -- has been confirmed among those who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.

The WHO said Friday it had confirmed six cases out of eight suspected ones.

The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde, where three infected people had been evacuated to Europe earlier in the week.

The WHO believes the first infection occurred before the start of the expedition, followed by transmission between humans onboard the vessel.

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

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

burs-al/imm/db

F.Qawasmeh--SF-PST