Hantavirus-hit cruise ship departs for Netherlands as final evacuations complete

The MV Hondius, a polar expedition ship carrying passengers from two dozen countries, left the Spanish port of Granadilla de Abona on Monday bound for the Netherlands. Behind it, the final chapter of a nine-day evacuation operation closed. Six passengers—four Australians, one Briton living in Australia, and a New Zealander—stepped onto the dock that morning along with 19 crew members and two doctors. They boarded buses to the airport, where two planes waited to carry them onward: one to the Netherlands for the crew, another continuing to Australia for the passengers, who would quarantine at a destination to be determined by their government.

The departure marked the end of a crisis that had unfolded across 41 days at sea. The ship had set sail from southern Argentina in April carrying 147 passengers and crew. By early May, a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses emerged among those aboard. Health officials in Johannesburg identified the culprit on May 2 when they tested a British passenger who had disembarked: hantavirus, the Andes strain, a respiratory infection typically spread by wild rodents but capable, in rare circumstances, of passing between people in close contact. By then, a Dutch passenger had already died—three weeks before anyone knew what was killing people on the ship.

The virus claimed three lives in total: the Dutch couple and a German national. As news of the outbreak spread, the ship altered course toward Cape Verde, then north to the Canary Islands. Spain's government, responding to a World Health Organization request, accepted responsibility for managing the evacuation. The MV Hondius arrived in Tenerife on May 6, and the work of getting people off the ship and home began in earnest.

By Monday's final evacuation, 94 people had been repatriated to their countries of residence. The decision to evacuate passengers to land rather than confine them aboard for weeks reflected a deliberate calculation about human welfare. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO's director-general, explained the reasoning at a press conference in Tenerife: some passengers had experienced mental breakdown during their isolation in the ship's confined spaces. "It's very difficult to stay for weeks in a small container," he said. "This was the best and the only option we had." The ship's captain, Jan Dobrogowski, praised the passengers and crew for their patience and discipline throughout the ordeal, calling them "a better group of people" than he could have imagined navigating such circumstances with.

The virus's spread, however, continued to surface new cases even as the ship emptied. By Monday, the WHO had confirmed seven cases of the Andes strain, with two additional suspected cases—one a person who died before testing, another on Tristan da Cunha, a remote island in the South Atlantic where testing was unavailable. A French passenger tested positive after the ship docked, her condition deteriorating. One of 14 Spaniards quarantining in Madrid tested positive, though presenting no symptoms. One of 17 Americans being repatriated showed a mildly positive result, with a second American displaying mild symptoms. A second test on the American sample at a different laboratory proved inconclusive.

Health officials moved quickly to contain public alarm. The virus does not spread easily between people, they emphasized, meaning the general public faced minimal risk. Gianfranco Spiteri, emergencies lead at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, told reporters that authorities understood the virus, could prevent further transmission, and were not expecting a new pandemic. The WHO recommended a 42-day quarantine for all passengers. Spain's Health Minister Monica Garcia, as the final passengers departed, declared the operation complete: "Mission accomplished; we've just wrapped up the operation and the ship has just set sail." The crew would finish their quarantine in the Netherlands. The passengers, scattered across continents, would quarantine in their home countries, their ordeal at sea finally behind them.