Spain readies for evacuations as a hantavirus-hit cruise ship heads for the Canary Islands

MADRID -- Spanish authorities on Friday were preparing to receive more than 140 passengers and crew members on board a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship headed for the Canary Islands, where health officials have said they will perform careful evacuations.

The vessel is expected to arrive Sunday at the Spanish island of Tenerife, off the coast of West Africa, and passengers will be taken to a “completely isolated, cordoned-off area,” said the head of Spain’s emergency services, Virginia Barcones.

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Both the U.S. and the U.K. have agreed to send planes to evacuate their citizens from the cruise ship.

While three people have died since the outbreak, and five passengers who left the ship are known to be infected with hantavirus, cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said Friday there were no people with symptoms of a possible infection on board the Dutch-flagged ship, the MV Hondius.

The World Health Organization considers the risk to the wider public from the outbreak as low.

On Friday, the WHO said a flight attendant on a plane briefly boarded by an infected cruise passenger has tested negative for hantavirus. Her possible infection had raised concerns about the virus’ potential transmissibility.

The flight attendant’s negative result should ease concerns among the public, said Christian Lindmeier, a WHO spokesman. “The risk remains absolutely low,” he said. “This is not a new COVID.”

Hantavirus is usually spread by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and isn’t easily transmitted between people. But the Andes virus detected in the cruise ship outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.

Health authorities across four continents were tracking down and monitoring more than two dozen passengers who disembarked the ship before the deadly outbreak was detected. They were also scrambling to trace others who may have come into contact with them.

Passengers on the ship worry about how people will treat them

In interviews with The Associated Press, two Spanish passengers -- speaking on condition of anonymity because of fears they’ll be ostracized once on land -- said that despite the outbreak, their days aboard have passed with relative tranquility. Some people are bird-watching, and others are gathering in common areas to read or attend talks, while wearing masks and social distancing. Both passengers told AP they’re worried about how they’ll be treated in Spain and once home.

“We’re scared by all the news that’s coming out, by how people are going to receive us, by how people see us,” one said. “We’re just normal people. We’ve heard that this is a millionaires’ cruise, and it’s the complete opposite of reality. And we’re scared by this.”

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Officials sought to reassure the public in the Canary Islands about possible exposure to the virus among the general population.

Once the ship reaches Tenerife, passengers will be evacuated in small boats to buses only after their repatriation flights are ready to take them, Spanish officials said Friday. Passengers will be transported in isolated and guarded vehicles, officials said, adding that the parts of the airport they travel through will be cordoned off.

Countries scramble to track passengers who disembarked

On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, Dutch officials and the ship’s operator said Thursday.

It wasn’t until May 2 that health authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a ship passenger, the WHO said.

The KLM flight attendant who tested negative for the virus was working on a flight headed from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on April 25, and had later fallen ill.

The cruise passenger briefly aboard that flight -- a Dutch woman whose husband died on the ship -- was too ill to stay on the international flight to Europe and was taken off the plane in Johannesburg, where she died.

The Dutch public health service is undertaking contact tracing on passengers who had contact with the ill woman before she left the plane.

On Friday, U.K. health authorities said a third British national who had been a passenger on the ship is suspected of being infected with hantavirus. The U.K. Health Security Agency said the person is on the island of Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory in the south Atlantic where the ship stopped in April. There was no word on the condition of the person.

Spanish health officials said Friday a woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante has symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection and is being tested.

She was a passenger on the same flight as the Dutch woman who died in Johannesburg after travelling on the cruise ship, Secretary of ⁠State for Health Javier Padilla told reporters.

Two other Britons who were on the ship have been confirmed to have the virus. One is hospitalized in the Netherlands and the other in South Africa.

Authorities in South Africa are working to trace contacts of any passengers who previously got off the ship. They have focused mainly on an April 25 flight from the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic to Johannesburg, the day after some passengers disembarked on the island.

Some state officials across the U.S. said they are monitoring a small number of residents who were on the ship and already went home, as well as people who may have come into contact with ship passengers. None has symptoms.

Health officials in the U.S. detail plans for American passengers

The U.S. agreed to send a plane to repatriate about 17 Americans who are still on the ship. Those passengers will be quarantined at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine, the hospital said Friday. None have symptoms.

Doctors will determine how long the quarantine will last after assessing the passengers.

The dedicated biocontainment and quarantine unit in Omaha previously was used to treat Ebola patients and some of the first COVID-19 patients. Nebraska Medicine is one of a handful of hospitals in the U.S. with specialized treatment units for people with highly dangerous infectious diseases.

“We are prepared for situations exactly like this,” Dr. Michael Ash, CEO of Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement.

The British government said it will charter a plane to evacuate the nearly two dozen British nationals onboard.

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By Suman Naishadham

Associated Press writers Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, Stefanie Dazio in Berlin, David Biller in Rome and Molly Quell in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.