All passengers evacuated from cruise ship hit by deadly hantavirus

(CNN) — All of the passengers of the MV Hondius and some of its crew have been evacuated from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship, as authorities continue to test people and monitor symptoms of the rare virus that has triggered an international health response.

Passengers were seen being ferried from the MV Hondius, anchored at the Port of Granadilla near the Spanish island of Tenerife, to the island on Sunday after the ship arrived earlier in the day carrying 147 people. Evacuations involved 94 passengers of 19 nationalities, according to Spanish health authorities.

The last of the passengers left the ship on Monday, some waving goodbye to the vessel before heading to their evacuation flights after more than five weeks at sea.

One of the 17 American passengers who was evacuated from the ship Sunday tested “mildly” positive for the Andes strain of the virus on a PCR test, while a second is showing mild symptoms, the US Department of Health and Human Services said. Spanish authorities have ruled the “mildly” positive case out, calling it inconclusive.

A French woman who was on board the MV Hondius has also tested positive for hantavirus and is being treated in a specialist hospital, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist told French radio station France Inter Monday.

The passenger began exhibiting symptoms during her return to France and tested positive upon arrival. Her health deteriorated overnight, Rist said.

Experts have sought to assuage fears of a new pandemic, with WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressing the virus is “not another Covid-19” and the risk to the public remains low.

The WHO director general said that he expected “more cases” to emerge among passengers due to the six to eight-week incubation period of the virus. However, he stressed that all passengers were in “good hands” with access to excellent medical care now they had disembarked the ship.

There have been nine reported cases and seven confirmed cases of hantavirus in the outbreak so far, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The US passengers landed early Monday in Nebraska, home to the National Quarantine Unit. The passenger who tested positive and the symptomatic passenger traveled in the plane’s biocontainment units “out of an abundance of caution,” HHS said.

In a Monday statement, the Spanish Ministry of Health said that while US authorities had classified one of the passengers as a “weak” positive, European health officials said the test was inconclusive. It said the symptomatic American passenger “developed a mild cough on May 6” that resolved a day later. “The doctors did not consider classifying the individual as a probable case,” it said.

CNN has reached out to HHS for more information.

Prior to disembarking, medical teams boarded the ship to run tests on passengers and crew, Spain’s health minister Mónica García said shortly before 8 a.m. local time.

After coming ashore, passengers filed onto waiting buses to be taken to the airport. From there, they were evacuated to their home countries.

The carefully managed repatriation operation involving multiple nations went “according to plan,” García told a news conference at the port on Sunday.

Since the vessel departed Argentina last month, the deaths of three people have been linked to hantavirus -–– a rare disease typically caused by exposure to infected rodents’ urine or feces –– while others have been evacuated from the ship for medical treatment.

In a video message posted Monday, the ship’s captain Jan Dobrogowski called the past few weeks “extremely challenging” and thanked his crew for the “courage and the selfless resolve that they showed time and again in the most difficult moments.” Dobrogowski said he was touched by the kindness that everyone on board showed one another and asked for “privacy and respect to our guests and their families and our crew members in this difficult time.”

Several nations, including the US, Spain, France, Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands, used aircraft to evacuate their nationals who were on the ship.

Flights evacuating the remaining passengers will depart for the Netherlands on Monday, Spain’s health ministry said.

The vessel has now set sail to Rotterdam in the Netherlands with the remaining crew members aboard. The voyage is expected to take around five days, the tour operator said. After the crew have disembarked the ship will be disinfected.

Passengers’ luggage will remain on the ship and be returned to them later, Oceanwide said.

Of the eighteen passengers evacuated to the US, 16 have been transferred to Nebraska, including at least one individual who tested positive for the hantavirus. All the passengers are asymptomatic, and the positive case has been taken to the biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s National Quarantine Unit, the hospital’s director said.

Two other passengers were transferred to Emory University Hospital’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit in Atlanta, including one person with symptoms and another who is a close contact,

After the other passengers are assessed, they will then be able to undergo home-based monitoring over the next 42 days, according to a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official.

A French woman who was on board the ship tested positive for hantavirus and is being treated in a specialist hospital, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist told French radio station France Inter Monday.

The passenger began showing symptoms during her return to France and tested positive upon arrival. Her health deteriorated overnight, Rist said.

A plane carrying 14 Spanish passengers who had been aboard the hantavirus-hit liner landed at Torrejon de Ardoz military airport, east of the capital Madrid, on Sunday afternoon.

They were then taken to a military hospital, where they will stay in individual rooms with no visitors allowed, and will receive a PCR test upon arrival and another seven days later, Spain’s health ministry said.

The UK government said 20 British nationals, one German national and one Japanese national who were aboard the ship are now being monitored at Arrowe Park Hospital in northwest England. The German national resides in the UK while the Japanese national was brought to the UK at the request of the Japanese government, according to a Monday statement from the UK Health Security Agency.

After the passengers are assessed by public health specialists, the passengers will be asked to isolate for up to 45 days, the UK Health Security Agency said.

The arrival of the cruise ship had caused tensions in the Canary Islands, an autonomous community of Spain, with the territory’s leader Fernando Clavijo, saying earlier in the week that he was opposed to the ship docking there.

Port workers in Tenerife also held protests, voicing their concerns about a lack of communication about the potential risks. CNN has contacted Ports of Tenerife and Clavijo’s office for comment.

The hantavirus outbreak was first reported to the World Health Organization on May 2.