People started disembarking from a cruise ship at the center of a deadly outbreak of hantavirus on Sunday morning, hours after the vessel anchored off Spain’s Canary Islands. Health officials around the world have sought to calm fears about the passengers’ return to land by vowing to closely monitor them for signs of disease.
The ship, the MV Hondius, arrived at the port of Granadilla de Abona in Tenerife, the largest of the islands, early on Sunday morning, according to Spanish health officials. Mónica García, Spain’s health minister, told reporters in Tenerife on Sunday that everyone on the ship was asymptomatic and that health officials had boarded the vessel to conduct an epidemiological evaluation.
Passengers and crew members began disembarking in small groups on Sunday. They were expected to continue through Monday evening, after the ship spent nearly six weeks at sea, and one month after a person first died on board from the illness.
There are about 150 people aboard, including crew members, passengers and four medical staff members who boarded the vessel when it was anchored off the coast of Cape Verde, an island archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean.
As the ship neared the Canary Islands on Saturday, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, moved to allay residents’ concerns about the hantavirus, which has rekindled anxieties from the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I know that when you hear the word ‘outbreak’ and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest,” he said in a statement addressed to Tenerife, after the leader of the regional government of the Canary Islands tried to block the arrival because of fears about the spread of disease.
“But I need you to hear me clearly: This is not another Covid,” Dr. Tedros added.
The Spanish government forced the anchoring in the archipelago, overriding a last-minute veto by the regional leader, who had argued that the central government had not provided enough information to guarantee the health of residents.
Since April 11, three passengers have died and five other people have fallen ill after showing symptoms of hantavirus, a rare family of viruses carried by rodents, according to the W.H.O.
The pathogen was confirmed in six people, the W.H.O. said, including two of the dead. Two other people are “probable cases,” the organization said.
Global health officials are taking steps to stop the outbreak from spreading, but have predicted a “limited” outbreak if public health measures were enacted.
In Tenerife, the ship is anchored offshore in an industrial port, with no people nearby. People will be taken ashore in small boats and then led to an airport, from where they are expected to be sent to their home countries, according to Spanish officials.
“Spain can assure the entire world that this will be handled properly and that there will be no additional contact beyond what has already occurred on the ship,” Ms. García, the health minister, said on Saturday.
Spanish citizens will be the first to leave the ship, she said. The evacuation is expected to conclude on Monday evening, she said, when a plane sent by Australia will depart with the last remaining passengers. The body of one of the three deceased passengers will remain on the ship, she said.
Once all passengers and some of the crew have disembarked, the MV Hondius will sail to the Netherlands to be disinfected, Spain’s interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, said on Saturday.
“We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the W.H.O.’s director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, said on Saturday, although she repeated the organization’s assessment that the risk to the general public remained low.
If a passenger displays symptoms during the evaluation process, they will be flown to the Netherlands on a separate aircraft for treatment. The W.H.O. also recommended a 42-day period of “active monitoring and follow-up” for everyone who disembarks.
Although human-to-human transmission of the hantavirus is rare, W.H.O. officials confirmed that the strain that has infected patients from the ship, called the Andes strain, is the only one known to spread among humans.
Countries are scrambling to trace people who may have been exposed to the virus after the ship set sail from Argentina in early April and stopped at islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
In Canada, Denmark, France, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States, health officials were monitoring people who were on the ship or had contact with sickened passengers.
Five French citizens on the ship will be flown back to France on Sunday, the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement. Upon arrival, they will be hospitalized and quarantined for three days for health monitoring and then will isolate for 45 days at home, the ministry said. There have been no confirmed hantavirus cases in France so far, according to French authorities.
Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.
Amelia Nierenberg is a Times reporter covering international news from London.
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