Hantavirus-hit cruise ship heads to Spain after three more patients were evacuated from the MV Hondius.
According to Reuters, the World Health Organization said that three people, two of them seriously ill, were evacuated on Wednesday, May 6, from a luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak and marooned for days off the coast of Cape Verde.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X, “Three suspected #hantavirus case patients have just been evacuated from the ship and are on their way to receive medical care in the Netherlands.”
The Dutch Foreign Ministry said those evacuated included a Dutch person, a German and a Briton. They will be transported to specialised hospitals in Europe.
The MV Hondius, which has nearly 150 people on board, is expected to head next to Spain's Canary Islands, ship operator Oceanwide Expeditions said.
Three people have so far died in the outbreak.
South Africa confirmed that it had identified among the victims the Andean strain of the virus that can, in rare cases, spread among humans.
Since the start of the outbreak, the WHO has said the risk to the wider public is low, and it stressed that this continued to be the case.
The Swiss government said a man who returned to Switzerland after being a passenger on the Hondius was infected with the hantavirus and was being treated in Zurich. It said there was no danger to the broader population.
