• Spanish health minister says final repatriation flight to Australia today
• British paratroopers lead airdrop onto Tristan da Cunha for suspected case
• Greek evacuee will be isolated for 45 days; Americans ‘will not necessarily be quarantined’

GRANADILLA ABONA: Occupants of a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak that has sparked international alarm began arriving home from Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday in a complex repatriation operation.

Three passengers from the MV Hondius, a Dutch couple 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 stressed the risk for global public health is low and played down comparisons to Covid-19 pandemic.

Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said the evacuation of most of the ship’s nearly 150 passengers and crew would continue until a final repatriation flight to Australia on Monday.

Spaniards first

Passengers wearing blue medical suits began disembarking the Dutch-flagged vessel onto smaller boats to reach the port of Granadilla on Tenerife.

The evacuees then boarded a red Spanish army bus and travelled to Tenerife South airport in a convoy, with a protective board separating the driver from the passengers. They changed into new protective equipment before boarding their repatriation flights, the first of which took 14 Spaniards to Madrid, where they will observe quarantine at a military hospital.

A plane bringing back five French citizens landed at an airport north of Paris on Sunday afternoon.

Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, Turkiye, Ireland, and the United States were listed by Garcia as the next countries to evacuate their citizens, with the Dutch plane also due to take Germans, Belgians and Greeks.

A plane from Australia which would transport its citizens as well as passengers from New Zealand and other unspecified Asian countries was due to land on Monday and depart by the afternoon, Garcia said.

UK team

Meanwhile, the UK military has parachuted a specialist team onto the remote island of Tristan da Cunha to provide medical support to the second suspected case, a British man who was a passenger on the ship and lives on the island in the South Atlantic.

The WHO recommended a 42-day quarantine period for the cruise passengers from their last exposure.

But a Greek man will be quarantined for 45 days, according to the Greek health ministry. The ministry in a statement said he would be put on a special Greek air force flight upon being evacuated from the ship. He will be flying from Spain’s Canary Islands initially to Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands from where he will be taken to a specially configured negative pressure room at a hospital in Athens, where he will be placed in mandatory quarantine for 45 days, the ministry said. The man, reportedly 70 years of age, is “in good health and asymptomatic”, the ministry said.

US passengers to reach Nebraska

However, American passengers will not necessarily be quarantined, according to a top US health official.

The US passengers, all of whom are asymptomatic, will be taken to a specialised centre in the rural state of Nebraska, but will not necessarily be quarantined there, Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN.

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2026