{"id":432507,"date":"2026-05-08T23:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T23:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/432507\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T23:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T23:42:09","slug":"passenger-evacuation-of-hantavirus-stricken-cruise-ship-may-be-delayed-due-to-bad-weather-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/432507\/","title":{"rendered":"Passenger evacuation of hantavirus-stricken cruise ship may be delayed due to bad weather \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The evacuation of the hantavirus<\/a>-stricken MV Hondius cruise ship must be completed within 24 hours of the vessel reaching Tenerife on Sunday or face days or even weeks of delay because of bad weather, authorities in the Canary Islands warned on Friday.<\/p>\n

The Dutch<\/a>-flagged vessel, which was sailing from Argentina<\/a> to Cape Verde, is due to arrive in the Spanish<\/a> archipelago this weekend, triggering what Spain\u2019s health minister has termed an \u201cunprecedented operation\u201d to receive, assess and repatriate the 149 passengers and crew members onboard.<\/p>\n

But the operation now faces the additional complication of changing weather.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only window of opportunity we have to carry out this operation is around 12 o\u2019clock on Sunday morning and until conditions change from Monday,\u201d Alfonso Cabello, a regional government spokesperson, told reporters on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOtherwise, the ship must leave and no operation could be carried out again in theory \u2026 until the end of May,\u201d he said, citing wind and swell.<\/p>\n

The Hondius is estimated to arrive at the port of Granadilla, Tenerife, in the early hours of Sunday. After negotiations between the Spanish government and the archipelago\u2019s regional authorities, it will not dock but will instead remain at anchor in the south-eastern port of Granadilla.<\/p>\n

Passengers will be evaluated on the ship and will not have any contact with the local population when they are taken from the ship to be repatriated or, in the case of the 14 Spanish nationals onboard, transported to a military hospital in Madrid for compulsory quarantine.<\/p>\n

Late on Friday night, the World Health Organisation<\/a> (WHO) said as of May 8th that six cases of the virus has been confirmed, while two others were probable. All six laboratory-confirmed cases were identified as the Andes strains.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, a \u200cDanish person \u200btested negative for the virus, Denmark\u2019s \u200bSSI public \u2060health authority said \u200cin \u200ca \u200bstatement.<\/p>\n

The \u200bDanish \u200bperson \u200cflew from Johannesburg \u200bto Amsterdam \u2060on \u2060a plane \u200bon which an infected person \u200calso \u2060travelled, the authority said<\/p>\n

Spanish health minister M\u00f3nica Garc\u00eda confirmed that non-Spanish citizens who did not need urgent medical attention would be evacuated to their home countries even if they showed symptoms of hantavirus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe international protocols will be followed \u2013 as will all the strict measures when it comes to health prevention,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"DockersDockers protest the arrival of a cruise ship affected by hantavirus in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on May 8th, 2026. Photograph: Jorge Guerrero\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

Two new suspected cases of the virus were reported earlier on Friday, one in Spain and the other on the remote south Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, \u200cas experts race to contain an outbreak that began on a luxury cruise ship.<\/p>\n

The announcements in locations thousands of kilometres apart will fuel concern about a cluster of cases so far associated with three deaths \u2013 though the WHO has repeatedly said the risk to the wider \u200bpublic is low and the virus does not transmit easily.<\/p>\n

A 32-year-old woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante has symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection and is being tested, Spanish health authorities said.<\/p>\n

She was briefly sitting on a plane behind a Dutch<\/a> woman who had contracted the virus on the MV Hondius, secretary of state for health Javier Padilla told reporters.<\/p>\n

That Dutch woman left the flight in Johannesburg feeling ill before it took off on April 25th and later died in hospital.<\/p>\n

A British man was also suspected of having the disease \u200bon Tristan da Cunha, the UK<\/a> health security agency said. Officials there said he was a passenger on the ship which made a stop on the island on April 13th to 15th.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on the dynamics of this outbreak, based on how it is spreading and not spreading \u2060amongst the people on the ship, the people who have disembarked, as well, we continue to consider the risk as low for the general population,\u201d Anais Legand, WHO technical officer for viral threats, said \u200cin \u200can \u200bonline briefing.<\/p>\n

Both new suspected cases have links to the original cluster of cases, officials said.<\/p>\n

Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee confirmed that the two Irish people on board the ship hit by are \u201csafe and well\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to acknowledge that a number of people have passed away and this is a very difficult situation for their families and those on board,\u201d she told reporters while attending the North South Ministerial Council meeting in Armagh city on Friday.<\/p>\n

McEntee\u2019s embassy team has been \u201cengaging directly\u201d with the two passengers and also with the Health Service Executive HSE to see what measures \u201cwould need to be taken when they do get home\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut obviously the priority is to make sure that they can get home as quickly as possible, and we\u2019re working with them and engaging with them on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cruise left Argentina in March with around 150 passengers and stopped in the Antarctic and other locations before heading north to waters off Cape Verde west of Africa where it has briefly held this week after news of \u2060the cases emerged.<\/p>\n

WHO officials have confirmed that some of the cases on the ship are caused by \u200bthe Andes strain of hantavirus, the only version that can spread between people, usually through prolonged and close contact \u200bwith a person who is showing symptoms.<\/p>\n

Three people \u2013 a Dutch couple and a German national \u2013 have died following the outbreak \u2013 the first of its kind on a ship.<\/p>\n

Four others confirmed to be infected, two Britons, a Dutch and a Swiss \u200cnational, are being treated in hospitals in the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland, \u200band a fifth case is suspected, according to the WHO.<\/p>\n

Those WHO figures do not include the suspected cases on Tristan da Cunha or in Spain.<\/p>\n

Cruise operator Oceanwide on Thursday said there were no people with symptoms of a possible infection remaining on board the ship, which was expected to dock in Tenerife early on Sunday.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Hantavirus: Is there a risk to the public? And the simple way to avoid infectionOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The cruise ship stopped at Tristan da Cunha between April 13th and 15th, with passengers disembarking to go on nature tours and visit the local shop and pub, online footage of the tour showed.<\/p>\n

The UK health security agency did not go into further detail on the British passenger with suspected symptoms.<\/p>\n

Tristan da Cunha, home to only around 200 people, is halfway between South Africa and South America and the world\u2019s remotest inhabited island, more than 2,400km and a six-day boat ride from St Helena, \u200cits nearest inhabited neighbour.<\/p>\n

The Spanish woman has \u201cmild respiratory \u2060symptoms\u201d and had been to a hospital where she will be tested for the virus, with results expected 24 to 48 hours later, according to a statement on the regional health department\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

Padilla said the woman was sitting two rows behind the cruise ship passenger, but the contact between them \u201cwas brief\u201d since the passenger had only been \u201con board for a short time\u201d.<\/p>\n

Padilla added that Valencia\u2019s \u200cregional health authorities were tracing the people the woman has been in contact with over the past few days. \u2013 Additional reporting: The Guardian\/Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The evacuation of the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius cruise ship must be completed within 24 hours of the vessel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9877,170,35731,42,12040,12512,43,9517,2727,40,38,41,39,1299,54157],"class_list":["post-432507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-argentina","tag-germany","tag-hantavirus","tag-headlines","tag-helen-mcentee","tag-netherlands","tag-news","tag-south-africa","tag-spain","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-kingdom","tag-world-health-organisation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}