On Saturday, the Director-General of the World Health Organization touched down in Spain in anticipation of the beleaguered cruise ship’s approach, which has been plagued by a rat virus outbreak.
The ship, facing its grim fate, will not be granted entry to dock at the Canary Islands. Instead, it will be held just offshore on Sunday, where specialized health teams clad in protective gear will board to facilitate the evacuation of its passengers and crew, who hail from over two dozen countries.
This development follows a tense standoff over the past week between Spain’s conservative regional leader and the nation’s socialist prime minister. The debate centered on adhering to the World Health Organization’s directive to allow the afflicted vessel to approach Spanish waters.
The ship, MV Hondius, is projected to reach the vicinity of Granadilla’s port on Tenerife island early Sunday morning, as reported by Oceanwide Expeditions in their latest update on Saturday.
A contingent of epidemiologists and medical experts dispatched by the Centers for Disease Control is on its way to Spain. Their mission is to accompany the 17 American passengers on board back home, alongside health officials from other nations.
In total, 147 passengers and 60 crew members will be repatriated to 24 countries, according to the most recent data provided by the ship’s crew. Among them, 14 Spaniards will be airlifted by military aircraft to Madrid for quarantine measures.
The US Department of State is chartering a government medical repatriation flight that will bring the 17 American passengers to the Air Force One Base in Omaha, Nebraska.
From there, they will be transported to the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska, where another CDC team is being deployed.
The CDC has not said how long the passengers will have to isolate before returning home. It’s also not known what states they are from. The incubation period for the hantavirus averages one to three weeks — but in rare cases can go up to eight weeks.
Three people have died, including Dutch ornithologists Leo and Mirjam Schilperoord and a German passenger, and at least five more have fallen sick. Three were airlifted from Cape Verde to the Netherlands on May 6, including 56-year-old British crew member Martin Antsee, and remain in the hospital as of Saturday.
Another was a 69-year-old British man, a passenger, who was airlifted from Ascension Island on April 27 to an intensive care unit in Johannesburg — along with his American partner, who is reportedly asymptomatic.
United Kingdom authorities confirmed Friday that a local on the remote island of Tristan da Cunha — where the ship made its first scheduled stop on April 15 — was being treated for a suspected case of the rodent-borne virus.
Hantavirus – the disease that killed Gene Hackman’s wife Betsy Arakawa – is usually spread through rodent droppings, but this strain, the Andes virus, can be spread between people and carries a mortality rate of nearly 40%.
Argentina experienced a spike in cases last year, logging 86 infections and 28 deaths in 2025 —one of its deadliest tallies in years, with wildfires in Patagonia suspected of pushing rodents closer to towns.
In January, the country’s National Epidemiological Bulletin determined that “with a total of 58 confirmed cases, the country is at the outbreak threshold” for hantavirus.
Argentinian officials dispatched a team to the city of Ushuaia this week to capture and analyze rat samples for the virus.
