The cruise liner affected by an outbreak of the hantavirus reaches Spain’s Canary Islands | DW News

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Imagine your dream expedition cruise, the one you saved up for, turns into a 40-day nightmare at sea.

[00:00:08]No, this is not a movie plot. It's the reality for the 140 people on the MV Hondius. The reason? A hantavirus outbreak on board. Three people are already dead, a Dutch couple and a German woman, and several others are infected. After weeks of being a pariah ship in the Atlantic, it's finally arrived to the Canary Islands.

[00:00:32]The ship pulled into Tenerife on a total lockdown in the early hours of this morning. We're talking a full maritime exclusion zone. No No one gets in and no one gets out without a hazmat suit.

[00:00:46]Passengers and some crew are now being brought ashore and uh loaded onto charter flights later back to their home countries. Usually hanta is something you catch from rat or mouse droppings in a dusty shed, but this outbreak is different. Health officials confirmed this is the Andes strain, which can jump from person to person.

[00:01:12]The nightmare isn't over for some of the sailors, either. About 30 of them have to stay on board to sail this ghost ship Hondius back to the Netherlands.

[00:01:25]And if you're getting 2020 COVID flashbacks, you're not alone.

[00:01:29]We have a molecular biologist walking us through the science in a few moments.

[00:01:34]But first, let's uh listen to the head of the WHO, the World Health Organization, who actually flew into Tenerife to try and cool the internet's and locals' nerves. His message, this is not another COVID.

[00:01:48]The concern is uh legitimate because we have all experienced because of COVID, especially in 2020.

[00:02:00]And that trauma is still in our minds.

[00:02:03]So, people will have questions, people will have concerns. The risk to the population to the local population is is low.

[00:02:12]Uh one is because of the very nature of the disease itself.

[00:02:17]But second, the risk is low because uh the Spanish government has made all the preparations um to prevent any uh problem.

[00:02:29]And for the latest, we're going to the Spanish capital, Madrid.

[00:02:34]Now, where DW correspondent Nicole Reese is standing by. Nicole, the ship has arrived in Tenerife. We've seen the images there. Uh people are being deboarded onto smaller boats. Walk us through what's happening on the ground there.

[00:02:49]Well, it's a big operation, which due to its nature also requires international cooperation. We uh also heard now that the representative of the World Health Organization is there on the ground with many more people from the Spanish side.

[00:03:03]Just to give you an idea of the magnitude, more than 350 members of the state security forces and corps have been deployed to Tenerife to ensure that this operation will be carried out smoothly, and passengers have been evacuated little by little with a bit of a delay this morning on smaller boats with the maximum capacity of five people, uh always accompanied by medical staff as well. Um here this has been called um transportation bubbles. They have been uh transport- transferred to land and then to the airport, which is very close by, around 10 minutes uh as as we hear here. And uh as for the Spanish passengers, for example, a military plane was arranged to fly them to Madrid, where they will have to quarantine in a special hospital that has a special floor that will be basically sealed off which is for these circumstances and has special ventilation as well, special entrances.

[00:04:03]And they will have to stay there for at least a week, maybe even more. This depends on how for example symptoms and stuff pans out. We heard the Spanish health minister this morning Monica Garcia who ensured that at the moment nobody is showing symptoms on board. So this is this basically a good sign. But there has been a very meticulous preparations for this operation today and it seems to be that everything has gone well so far. Let's see if we stay on the non-symptomatic side of course.

[00:04:36]But yeah, evacuation is ongoing and going forward.

[00:04:41]Now, how do the authorities and doctors at the scene there ensure that the virus does not spread from the harbor across the island?

[00:04:51]This was the biggest worry of course.

[00:04:53]This was being talked about again and again this week also in Spanish media but there's actually little room for such spread. First of all, the passengers of the ship are not going into the city. They're not in contact with locals. They're only in contact with the medical teams and the operation staff that is there on the ground and then in the respective hospitals. Um and also it needs apparently according to medical expert it needs extensive contact to somebody who is infected. So um the spreading is a bit more difficult than some might imagine. The information has been very important throughout the week to calm down some people who got very worried.

[00:05:35]Um but also the execution of this operation on the ground of course foresees lots of prevention. Medical staff attending as well as the passengers are equipped with the FFP2 masks that we all know from the COVID pandemic. They're wearing personal protective equipment such as the special suits. People, as I said, are not going into the city. There are special corridors with tents on the grounds where everything is happening between the ports. Um it's only small groups that are being transferred.

[00:06:04]And um they even needed passengers even needed to put their belongings into plastic bags. Um we haven't heard about the real reason for this, but this is also precautionary measure. They will not sit with normal passengers on these repatriation, sorry, repatriation flights which have been organized only for this mere purpose from different countries. This is um the way it's a common protocol uh has it has been explained for these types of scenarios. Some critics with medical background also said that it's an exaggerate operation citing that the fear and the trauma from the COVID pandemic probably has led to such a big operation on the ground, but it actually shows us also at what point we are and if and how these protocols work in a worst-case scenario now in 2026.

[00:06:53]Now uh talking about uh the situation there locally on the ground, we've uh been getting reports about protests by residents in Tenerife. What can you tell us about that?

[00:07:04]Indeed, there have been smaller protests. Uh for example, on Friday, there were also some dock workers included who said they were not being informed. They were fearing for their safety. Some of them threatened that they would block the arrival of the ship. Um so they were worried about working at the port while this ship is coming in and that it might actually get closer to them. There was also this whole sense of not being listened to and being overruled this uh uh whole political spat between uh the Spanish central government and the government on the Canary Islands led by Fernando Clavijo, who is the president there, and who who almost until the last minute said that he would not allow this ship to anchor if if there was no guarantee that people would be evacuated within the the day, which is apparently not possible because the last passengers will be flown out on Monday, but that said, the whole week we have seen political tension here also with the opposition parties blaming Pedro Sanchez, the prime minister, to use this virus crisis to distract from corruption scandals that he's been surrounded by.

[00:08:13]This came from the far-right party Vox.

[00:08:15]We have also seen criticism from the conservative party PP, who said that he's not handling this this matter very well, but all in all, seeing what happens on the ground, it it seems that these political spats have been set aside. Also in the statements, we haven't heard much of a word of criticism from the health minister today. All focus was on the evacuation and that things would go smoothly and that uh passengers are being transferred back into their respective countries with these extra flights that have been arranged.

[00:08:47]DW correspondent Nicole Reese there reporting from Madrid for us. Thank you, Nicole.

[00:08:56]Now let's shed some more light on this mysterious virus with a science journalist and microbiologist Kai Kupferschmidt.

[00:09:05]Uh Kai, how dangerous is this current appearance of that virus from a public health perspective in your view? The WHO says this is not like COVID, but is it comparable?

[00:09:19]It really isn't comparable and I think I can totally understand why people who see the news, who you know, hear about this outbreak on a ship, why it might remind them of the pandemic, but this virus is just a very different virus and I think it's just really important to realize that if you go back to the pandemic for instance, yes, of course we saw cruise ships there also be affected, but it's not like that started the pandemic, right? The virus wasn't really spreading everywhere and it also spread really well on cruise ships. In this case, what we have is a virus that doesn't seem to be very good at spreading human to human. We only have a few really good instances where we've seen that in the last 30 years.

[00:09:56]And it got into a cruise ship and there it seems to have had a very good chance to spread in a way that it normally doesn't. So, you always have to be careful with these things. You know, unforeseen stuff can happen. There might be a case here or there that's that's not related. Um somebody who wasn't infected on the boat, but so far everything we've seen is that there are a few people on this boat who were unlucky enough to get this virus. And to be fair, this is a terrifying situation for those people on the boat, right? It is not um it shouldn't be a terrifying situation for the rest of us because there is the for the rest of us are not at risk.

[00:10:31]Okay, that's good to hear. Uh but how dangerous is this virus itself? Can you describe the symptoms for us?

[00:10:39]Yeah, the virus is a scary virus, to be fair. So, what what is hantaviruses do?

[00:10:45]We have hantaviruses uh across the world. We have them here in Germany, too, for instance. But in in Europe, really, these are old world hantaviruses. They are slightly different. And this virus, the one that's on this ship, that's a new world hantavirus. And these viruses, they they seem to go for the cells that line our blood vessels, especially in the heart, in the lungs.

[00:11:07]And over time, that leads them to become a little bit leaky, the blood vessels.

[00:11:12]And so, the lungs starts filling with liquid, the heart can't pump enough blood anymore, and basically, it's respiratory failure that that leads to.

[00:11:21]And so, that is why this virus is so dangerous. And that happens really fast.

[00:11:26]So, the first symptoms people get can just be fever, you know, can even be nausea. And then very suddenly people can progress to these much more severe symptoms, and that's why it's so important to get the sick people off the ship because they need to be close to to for instance ECMO, so an opportunity to make sure you can bypass their heart and their lungs and have a machine that does it for them. Mhm. This all does sound pretty serious to me. How is this virus transmitted from person to person then?

[00:11:57]So this is where we really don't know that much partly because again over the last 30 years we've only seen a few instances of it spreading from human to human where we are really sure that that's what happened.

[00:12:07]One thing that seems to be the case where we have seen it, it seems to be that it's from respiratory secretions of people, so basically probably droplets that people breathed in. It seems to take quite close contact most of the time. So we're often talking about the the spouses of people who have been infected. There are instances where it spread at a birthday party for instance in five people who were sitting close to somebody who was sick at the time were infected.

[00:12:33]So that's that's kind of what we know.

[00:12:35]It's hopefully the boat will actually like an epidemiological investigation on the ship might actually lead to some more things, you know, to that we can learn about this.

[00:12:45]But I think the one thing that's notable that in other situations would be worrying is the fact that people can become infectious just around the time when they start having the first symptoms, and that includes just before that time. And so if this virus was more transmissible, that is something that would worry me. But again, as far as we know with this virus, that is not the case. Well, that leads directly to my next question. This rather long latency period of up to 45 days, some say even 60 days, uh does it mean while I'm infected and it takes 45 to 60 days for first symptoms to show, does it mean that I'm only infectious once symptoms start to appear, am I infectious much earlier on without knowing it?

[00:13:35]So, I would generally be a little bit careful with making any like blanket statements on this just because we know so little, but some of the instances we've investigated, we know that it seems that people have the highest risk of infecting others just around the time that they get the first symptoms. So, I was talking to researchers in Argentina who obviously have the most experience in dealing with this for many decades, and when they at one point had a big outbreak in 2018-19, they actually instituted quarantine for people in order to stop the outbreak, and there what they assumed was that people were infectious for up to 5 days before the infection, and then 5 days after. Other people have said, you know, 2 days before to 5 days after. There's different kind of the different numbers, but the basic idea is you're most infectious around that time.

[00:14:26]Now, what is the most important goal now, both for the local authorities there, but also for organizations like the WHO?

[00:14:37]You know, honestly, I the most important thing was getting the sick people off the boat for the reasons that I outlined, right? They really needed to be close to a medical center that can provide adequate care.

[00:14:46]In the current situation, honestly, the biggest thing I think is to now that there's no immediate risk for anybody involved, there's nobody on the boat who has symptoms right now, I think the biggest thing is just showing that we can do this. Like, I was talking to an epidemiologist recently, and he told me, you know, this whole hantavirus outbreak, it's like an emergency broadcasting system being tested. It's really This is not an international health crisis, but it will show us how we respond to an international health crisis. And so, I think I am looking at all of this very closely because I am curious how of world after the pandemic is kind of set up to deal with something like this. And it was interesting to see that there were, you know, problems even getting the boat to to dock anywhere and for countries to work together. But overall, so far, I'm actually quite relieved that, you know, the science does seem to to be winning out in terms of how people are responding to this.

[00:15:39]Definitely a test case of what we've learned in that coronavirus crisis. The science journalist Kai Kupferschmidt, thank you very much for sharing your expertise with us.

[00:15:53]Thank you.

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