{"id":34184,"date":"2026-05-11T09:45:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T07:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&p=34184"},"modified":"2026-05-11T09:45:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T07:45:11","slug":"evacuation-of-passengers-from-virus-hit-cruise-ship-to-be-completed-on-monday","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/evacuation-of-passengers-from-virus-hit-cruise-ship-to-be-completed-on-monday\/","title":{"rendered":"Evacuation of passengers from virus hit cruise ship to be completed on Monday"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The evacuation of passengers from a Dutch-flagged luxury cruise ship hit by a \u200bdeadly hantavirus outbreak will be completed on Monday with flights from Australia and the Netherlands, Spain’s Health Minister has said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

One \u200cflight from Australia will evacuate six passengers from the Spanish island of Tenerife and another from the Netherlands will take 18 passengers, with both flights also carrying passengers from other countries that did not send their own repatriation flights, officials have said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Eight people no longer on the ship have fallen ill, according to a World Health \u200bOrganisation tally from Friday, of whom six are confirmed to have contracted the virus.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Three have died, a Dutch couple and a \u200bGerman national.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

On Sunday, the United States (US) Department of Health and Human Services said one of the 17 Americans being\u00a0\u2060repatriated has tested positive for the Andes strain of the virus while a second has mild symptoms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The French Health Minister said a French passenger \u200bhad tested positive for the virus and that person’s health was deteriorating.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

It was not clear if these two cases were included in the \u200bsix reported by the World Health Organisation (WHO).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The MV Hondius was carrying 147 passengers and crew when a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses among passengers was first reported to the WHO on May 3.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

By then, 34 other passengers had departed the vessel, which first sailed from Argentina in March with stops in the Antarctic and other locations before \u200bheading north to waters off Cape Verde west of Africa. The vessel was briefly held there last week after news of the outbreak emerged.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The outbreak \u200bof the virus, usually spread by rodents but also transmittable person to person in rare cases of close contact, was first detected by health officials in Johannesburg, South Africa on May \u200c2 treating \u2060a British man who was taken into intensive care after disembarking the ship, about three weeks after another passenger had died.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The luxury cruise ship left for Spain’s Canary Islands off West Africa on Wednesday from the coast of Cape Verde when the WHO and European Union asked the country to manage the evacuation of passengers after the outbreak was detected.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

–Reuters–<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13298,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-34184","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"Evacuation of passengers from virus hit cruise ship","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34190,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34184\/revisions\/34190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=34184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}