• WHO chief says ‘work is not over’
• Dutch hospital quarantines 12 staffers after patient handled without protocols
• Italian man with symptoms hospitalised

EINDHOVEN: The last two evacuation planes carrying passengers and crew from the hantavirus-hit ship MV Hondius landed in the Netherlands on Tuesday.

Travelling in the two planes were 28 evacuees from the ship, according to the Dutch foreign ministry, including passengers, crew, and medical staff.

The first plane to land was transporting six former guests of the Hondius, four from Australia, one from New Zealand, and one British person who lives in Australia.

These six are expected to stay in a quarantine facility close to the airport before being repatriated towards Australia.

The other plane was carrying 19 crew members, one British doctor and two epidemiologists (one from the World Health Organisation and one from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control).

The cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak headed to the Netherlands on Tuesday after its last passengers disembarked in Spain’s Canary Islands, with at least seven of the evacuees testing positive for the virus.

Three people died after the rare virus that usually spreads among rodents was detected on board the MV Hondius, sparking a global health scare.

Among living patients, seven cases have been confirmed and an eighth is listed as “probable”, according to the WHO, the UN health body and certain national health authorities.

French officials said one woman who tested positive was in stable condition in ICU.

No vaccines or specific treatments exist for the virus, but health officials have said the risk to the public is low and dismissed comparisons to the Covid-19 pandemic.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “our work is not over” to contain hantavirus.

“There is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak,” Tedros told a joint news conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Madrid after overseeing the evacuation in Spain’s Canary Islands.

“But of course the situation could change, and given the long incubation period of the virus, it’s possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks,” Tedros said of the Andes variant, which is transmissible between humans.

Dutch hospital quarantines 12

A Dutch hospital has quarantined 12 staff members in a preventive measure after blood and urine from a hantavirus patient were handled without observing strict protocols.

They will be quarantined for six weeks, the Radboudumc hospital in the city of Nijmegen said, adding that the infection risk was very low and patient care continued uninterrupted.

Italian hospitalised

An Italian man with suspected hantavirus is being transferred to Rome’s Spallanzani infectious disease hospital for testing, ANSA news agency reported on Tuesday.

The 25-year-old from the southern region of Calabria had been placed in quarantine after travelling on a Dutch KLM flight alongside a woman who later died from a hantavirus infection, ANSA added.

Meanwhile, French health minister Stephanie Rist said on Tuesday some things about the hantavirus that struck the MV Hondius cruise ship were not known, including whether it has mutated, although officials were “rather reassured”. “There are things ... we do not know about this virus,” Rist told the National Assembly.

“We do not yet have the complete sequencing of the virus which allows us to say with certainty today, even if we are rather reassured to date, we do not have the certainty to say that this virus has not yet mutated.”

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2026