JOHANNESBURG/MADRID, May 6 (Reuters) - A luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak and marooned since Sunday off the coast of Cape Verde was set to leave for Spain on Wednesday after three people, two of them seriously ill, were evacuated.

The MV Hondius, with nearly 150 people on board, is expected to dock in Spain's Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, within three days, Spain's health minister said, adding that those still on board were not presenting any symptoms of the disease.

Once in Tenerife, if they are still healthy, all non-Spanish citizens will be repatriated to their countries, Monica Garcia told a press conference in Madrid.

QUARANTINE

The 14 Spanish passengers will be quarantined in a military hospital in Madrid, Garcia said. The duration of the quarantine will depend on when they potentially had contact with the virus, she said, adding that it has a 45-day incubation period.

Three people - a Dutch couple and a German national - have so far died in the outbreak.

A total of eight people - including a Swiss citizen who has returned home and is being treated in Zurich - are suspected to have contracted the virus, with three of them confirmed by laboratory testing, the World Health Organisation said.

South Africa confirmed that it had identified among the victims the Andean strain of the virus that can - in rare cases - spread among humans through very close contact.

"This is the only (hantavirus) strain that is known to cause human-to-human transmission, but such transmission is very rare and... only happens due to very close contact," South Africa's health ministry said.

THREE EVACUATED

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X that the three people evacuated from the ship on Wednesday were on their way to the Netherlands.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry said these people included a Dutch person, a German and a Briton and that they would be transported to specialised hospitals in Europe.

Two of those evacuated presented acute symptoms, the ship's operator Oceanwide Expeditions said. The third person was closely linked to the German passenger who died on the ship on May 2. The Dutch ministry said that person was possibly infected with the virus.

The ship set off from the southern tip of Argentina in late March and travelled to some of the most remote places on earth.

Cape Verde had been intended as the ship's final destination, but the archipelago nation off West Africa has not allowed the passengers to come ashore because of the outbreak.

'VERY, VERY DIFFERENT TO COVID'

Since the start of the outbreak, the WHO has said the risk to the wider public from a virus usually transmitted by rodents is low and it stressed on Wednesday that this remained the case.

"So when we say close contact (for human-to-human transmission), we mean very close physical contact, whether it's sharing a bunk room or sharing a cabin, providing medical care, for example, (that is) very, very different to COVID and very different to influenza," Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO Director of Epidemic and Pandemic Management, told Reuters.

Van Kerkhove said the WHO was working with countries to follow up with passengers who left the boat at St Helena in the south Atlantic, before it reached Cape Verde.

South Africa has identified 65 people who have been in contact with people with confirmed or suspected hantavirus cases, and other countries have identified 12, the WHO's South Africa representative Shenaaz El-Halabi told Reuters.

'OUR DAYS HAVE BEEN CLOSE TO NORMAL'

Passenger Kasem Hato told Reuters the ship's captain was keeping passengers updated and that those on board had been advised to limit close contact with other passengers and use hand sanitizer regularly.

"People are taking the situation seriously but without any panic, trying to keep social distancing and wearing masks to be safe," he said.

"Our days have been close to normal, just waiting for authorities to find a solution, but morale on the ship is high and we're keeping ourselves busy with reading, watching movies, having hot drinks, and that kind of things."

(Writing by Ingrid Melander; Reporting by Sfundo Parakozov, Nellie Peyton, Tim Cocks in Johannesburg, Emma Pinedo and David Latona in Madrid, Bart Meijer and Charlotte Van Campenhout in Amsterdam, Madeline Chambers in Berlin, Makini Brice in Paris, Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva, Catherine Cartier, Jennifer Rigby in London; Editing by Tim Cocks, Thomas Derpinghaus and Gareth Jones)

Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.

This story was originally published May 6, 2026 at 3:11 PM.

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