The cruise ship at the center of the deadly Hantavirus cases is expected to arrive in Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands of Spain, early on Sunday morning to allow its passengers to disembark, Spanish officials said.
Spanish passengers on the ship, the MV Hondius, will disembark first, the country’s health minister, Mónica García, said during a joint news conference with Spain’s interior minister on Saturday.
Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United States will send planes to evacuate passengers from their countries, said the Spanish interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska.
The European Union will send two planes to pick up passengers from other European countries, and the Netherlands will evacuate non-European citizens whose countries cannot send planes, he said.
“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 said.
Once all the passengers have left the ship, the Hondius will sail to the Netherlands to be disinfected, Mr. Grande-Marlaska said.
Of the 147 people currently onboard the ship, according to its operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, none are symptomatic, the World Health Organization said.
Once the Hondius arrives in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, passengers will be brought on shore at the Port of Granadilla in sealed and guarded vehicles through a corridor cordoned off from the public, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, said in a letter on Saturday addressed directly to “the people of Tenerife.”
The passengers will then be repatriated to their home countries, he said.
Health workers have assessed each passenger’s level of exposure and the risk to the general public remains low, Maria Van Kerkhove, W.H.O.’s director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, said during a briefing on Saturday.
Any passengers who display symptoms will be taken to a separate aircraft and flown to the Netherlands for treatment, she said.
Dr. Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he would be in Tenerife to personally oversee the operation, and pay his respects “to an island that has responded to a difficult situation with grace, solidarity and compassion.”
He assured local residents that they had little to fear.
“This is not another Covid,” he said.
The Hondius departed Argentina on April 1 with 114 passengers and 61 crew members. Three passengers have since died, one of whom was confirmed to have had the virus, according to the W.H.O.
Seven of the 17 Americans who were on the ship have already returned home, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The agency said on Saturday that the remaining U.S. passengers would be evacuated to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
Though the center does have a quarantine unit, the C.D.C. said that the passengers would not be quarantined, but would instead be monitored and assessed for a period of 42 days, in some cases at their homes, in coordination with local jurisdictions and other government agencies.
Some passengers staying at home may be asked to limit outside activities that involve long interactions with others, the agency said on Saturday.
It was not immediately clear how many U.S. passengers might remain at the medical center and how many would be sent home to be monitored.
All of the remaining U.S. passengers are asymptomatic and testing them for the hantavirus is not recommended, according to the C.D.C. People without symptoms cannot transmit the virus, the agency added.
Investigators in South Africa and Switzerland have confirmed that the hantavirus cases onboard the Hondius involve the Andes strain of the virus, which is primarily found in South America and is the only hantavirus known to spread among people.
Early symptoms of infection include fever, chills, body aches and headaches. As the illness progresses, it can cause shortness of breath and, in severe instances, lung or heart failure.
Scientists around the world have been working, in some cases for decades, to develop treatments and vaccines specifically targeting the hantavirus, but without much success.
Lynsey Chutel contributed reporting.
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