GRANADILLA DE ABONA – Occupants of a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak that has sparked international alarm began flying home from Spain’s Canary Islands yesterday in a complex repatriation operation.

Three passengers from the MV Hondius — a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman — have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.

No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is endemic in Argentina, where the ship departed in April.

But health officials have stressed that the risk for global public health is low and played down comparisons to a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The final flight to evacuate most of the ship’s nearly 150 passengers and crew will leave for Australia on Monday, before the ship continues to the Netherlands, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said.

Passengers wearing blue medical suits began disembarking the Dutch-flagged vessel onto smaller boats to reach the port of Granadilla on Tenerife, AFP journalists saw.

The evacuees then boarded a red Spanish army bus and travelled to Tenerife South airport in a convoy with Civil Guard vehicles. A protective board separated the driver from the passengers.

The evacuees changed into new protective equipment before boarding their repatriation flight, the first of which left carrying 14 Spaniards who will observe quarantine at a military hospital in Madrid.

“The operation is going very well,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at the port.

Garcia said a Dutch flight that would also take citizens from Germany, Belgium, Greece and part of the crew would follow the Spanish departure.

Separate flights for Canadian, Turkish, French, British, Irish and US citizens were also planned for yesterday. – Nampa/AFP