GENEVA: The World Health Organization said on Saturday it considered everyone on board a cruise ship hit with a deadly hantavirus outbreak as “high-risk” contacts who should be actively monitored for 42 days.

There are nearly 150 people on board the MV Hondius at the centre of the outbreak that has killed three people, which is heading towards the waters off Tenerife. “We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact,” WHO’s epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director Maria Van Kerkhove told a social media event.

Currently, “there’s nobody on board that has any symptoms”, she said, adding though that “active monitoring and follow-up of all the passengers and crew who disembark for a 42-day period” was recommended.

Van Kerkove stressed that the risk to the general public and to the people of the Canary Islands, where the Hondius is expected to anchor on Sunday, remained “low”.

Three passengers from the ship — a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman — have died, out of eight confirmed and suspected cases of 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 the six cases who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.

Van Kerkhove said the United Nations health agency was coordinating with member states — in particular Spain and the Netherlands, the ship’s operator, and experts around the world on the best way forward.

On Saturday, WHO had briefed countries with nationals on board the ship about the plans for “safe and dignified disembarkment”, she said. The idea, she said, was for anyone who might be showing symptoms to “immediately go to a medical evacuation plane and be taken to the Netherlands for care”.

Countries were organising planes to take all those without symptoms back home, with some countries, like the United States and Canada, discussing sharing a plane, Van Kerkhove said.

Everyone coming off the ship would meanwhile need to be monitored for 42 days, starting from their last point of exposure with a confirmed or suspected hantavirus case, she said. That means, she said, “the clock has already started ticking”.

WHO chief writes letter to Tenerife people

The WHO chief told the people of Tenerife that the risk to them from an arriving cruise ship hit with a deadly hantavirus outbreak was “low”.

“I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another Covid,” World Health Organisation director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in an open letter to the people of the Spanish island where the MV Hondius was expected to arrive on Sunday.

“The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low.” The Dutch-flagged cruise ship was expected to reach waters off Tenerife at dawn, with Tedros also due on the archipelago to help coordinate the evacuation of around 150 people on board.

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.

It has also sparked fears among people of the Canary Islands, with regional authorities having refused to allow the vessel to dock, deciding it will remain offshore while passengers are screened and evacuated.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2026