Last Hantavirus-Hit Cruise Evacuation Flights Leave Tenerife

(MENAFN) The last two evacuation flights carrying passengers from a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak were set to depart Monday afternoon from waters near the Spanish island of Tenerife, Spain's Health Minister Monica Garcia announced Sunday.

Garcia confirmed to reporters that 94 passengers had already been successfully evacuated from the vessel ahead of the final departures.

An Australian repatriation aircraft was slated to carry six passengers, while a Dutch flight was set to transport 18 individuals — including travelers from nations that did not organize their own dedicated evacuation operations — local media reported, citing officials.

The evacuation process had begun Sunday, when 14 Spanish nationals became the first to disembark, airlifted aboard a military aircraft to Madrid before being transferred to a military hospital for quarantine and testing.

The operation unfolded amid a backdrop of political friction, drawing objections from Canary Islands President Fernando Clavijo. Spanish health officials, however, moved swiftly to dispel fears that infected rodents could reach the shoreline from the stricken vessel, stating that the probability of an Andean rodent swimming to the Canary coast was "zero."

Hantavirus is a rare, rodent-borne illness typically contracted through contact with infected animals or their droppings. The specific strain driving this outbreak, however, carries an added danger — it is also capable of spreading from person to person.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has designated the situation a Level 3 emergency response — the agency's lowest emergency activation threshold.

The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the outbreak involves the Andes strain of hantavirus and has so far produced five verified cases, among them three fatalities. Scientists identified the Andes variant as the sole known hantavirus strain with documented human-to-human transmission capability, typically occurring through close personal contact.

The WHO further disclosed that two of the passengers who subsequently died had previously traveled through Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay before boarding the ship.

CDC officials indicated that all passengers will face approximately six weeks of health monitoring — a window aligned with the virus's known incubation period. Health authorities across multiple US states are also actively tracking individuals who had already disembarked from the vessel before the outbreak was formally identified.

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