GRAN CANARIA: A plane carrying evacuees from a ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak arrived in Spain’s Canary Islands on Wednesday to fix a patient’s isolation bubble after Morocco refused a landing request, regional government sources said.
A journalist saw one of two planes that had left Cape Verde with three people from the ship land at the airport of Gran Canaria, but it was unclear which of the evacuees were onboard.
At least one of the two planes was due to go to Amsterdam, but no arrival in the Canary Islands had been confirmed by authorities. Sources from the health department of the Atlantic archipelago’s regional government said an Amsterdam-bound plane arrived in Gran Canaria to fix a patient’s isolation bubble after Morocco denied a landing request.
“A patient’s isolation bubble was broken. And they stopped to fix it,” the sources said, adding: “No person will disembark or board. It is a technical stop.”
According to monitor Flightradar24, the plane is due to carry out another stopover in the southern Spanish city of Malaga before reaching Amsterdam. Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia said the stricken cruise ship MV Hondius would arrive at the island of Tenerife by Saturday for medical examinations and repatriations of the passengers.
The Canaries regional government has opposed receiving the Dutch-flagged ship, requesting that any medical treatment and repatriations take place from Cape Verde.
The vessel has been at the centre of an international health scare since last weekend, when the UN’s health agency was informed that three passengers had died and the suspected cause was hantavirus.
The rare disease is usually spread from infected rodents, typically through urine, droppings and saliva.
WHO plays down fears
Health officials played down fears of a wider global outbreak from the virus, which is less contagious than Covid.
UN health agency chief Tedros said it was not like the Covid-19 pandemic, adding: “The risk to the rest of the world is low.”
Passengers began falling ill a month ago.
A Dutch man died on board on April 11, and his wife, who left the ship to accompany his body to South Africa, died there 15 days later after also falling ill. Two other people are still being treated — one in Johannesburg and one in the Swiss city of Zurich.
Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia Gomez said the vessel would dock within the next three days in Tenerife, in the Canaries, and all foreign passengers would be flown back to their home countries from there if their health allowed.
The Hondius set sail from Ushuaia in Argentina on April 1, and has been anchored off Cape Verde since Sunday while emergency teams try to deal with the situation.
Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2026
