Spain’s Canary Islands brace for incoming hantavirus-stricken cruise ship

140 passengers and crew on the MV Hondius vessel will be ‘completely isolated’ and evacuated, say Spanish authorities.A cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak is en route to Spain’s Canary Islands, where it plans to drop off 140 passengers and crew so they can be evacuated after weeks stranded at sea.The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius vessel, on which at least eight people fell ill, is due to reach the Spanish island of Tenerife, off the coast of West Africa, early Sunday morning.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Infected passengers evacuated from hantavirus cruise shiplist 2 of 3Argentina investigates link to deadly hantavirus outbreak on cruise shiplist 3 of 3Passenger from Hantavirus-hit ship speaks to Al Jazeera from isolationend of listPassengers will be taken to a “completely isolated, cordoned-off area”, said the head of Spain’s emergency services, Virginia Barcones. World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will be on the island to help coordinate their evacuation, according to Spanish ministry sources cited by AFP.While three people have died since the outbreak, and five passengers who left the ship are known to be infected with hantavirus, cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said Friday there were no people with symptoms of a possible infection on board the ship.The WHO considers the risk to the wider public from the outbreak as low.“This is not a new COVID,” said WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier. “The virus is not that contagious that it easily jumps from person to person.”Hantavirus is usually spread by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and is not easily transmitted between people. But the Andes virus detected in the cruise ship outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.Health authorities across four continents were tracking down and monitoring more than two dozen passengers who disembarked the ship before the deadly outbreak was first detected on May 2. They were also scrambling to trace others who may have come into contact with them.