{"id":440939,"date":"2026-05-09T22:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T22:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/440939\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T22:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T22:06:09","slug":"who-seeks-to-reassure-worried-tenerife-residents-over-arrival-of-hantavirus-hit-ship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/440939\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO seeks to reassure \u2018worried\u2019 Tenerife residents over arrival of hantavirus-hit ship"},"content":{"rendered":"

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has sought to reassure \u201cworried\u201d Tenerife residents they will not encounter passengers of a hantavirus<\/a>-hit cruise ship set to dock on the island.<\/p>\n

The UN agency said there had been six confirmed hantavirus cases linked to the MV Hondius ship and that four patients were currently in hospital.<\/p>\n

It added that a total of eight cases, including three deaths, had been reported \u2013 with one suspected case being reclassified after testing negative for hantavirus.<\/p>\n

Workers set up temporary shelters at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife where passengers are expected to disembark from the MV Hondius (Manu Fernandez\/AP)<\/p>\n

The WHO said on Saturday that there were currently no symptomatic passengers on board the ship.<\/p>\n

In a letter addressed to the people of Tenerife, WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he knew residents were \u201cworried\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Ethiopian public health official said the virus was \u201cserious\u201d but the outbreak was \u201cnot another Covid\u201d and the \u201ccurrent public health risk from hantavirus remains low\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cSpain\u2019s authorities have prepared a careful, step-by-step plan: passengers will be ferried ashore at the industrial port of Granadilla, far from residential areas, in sealed, guarded vehicles, through a completely cordoned-off corridor, and repatriated directly to their home countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will not encounter them. Your families will not encounter them.<\/p>\n

\u201cNearly 150 people from 23 countries have been at sea for weeks, some of them grieving, all of them frightened, all of them longing for home.<\/p>\n

\u201cTenerife has been chosen because it has the medical capacity, the infrastructure, and the humanity to help them reach safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two British men are currently being treated for hantavirus in the Netherlands and Johannesburg, South Africa, while a third British man with symptoms is being cared for on the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha.<\/p>\n

The outbreak has been connected to a birdwatching expedition in Argentina which two of the passengers went on before boarding the ship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The World Health Organisation (WHO) has sought to reassure \u201cworried\u201d Tenerife residents they will not encounter passengers of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[188479,103,61,60,4023],"class_list":["post-440939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-hantavirus","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-place-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}