The cruise ship MV Hondius has arrived in the port of Granadilla, on the island of Tenerife, to allow the evacuation of passengers and part of the crew. According to reports from the Spanish authorities, the people on board will be tested by the Spanish health authorities and then transported ashore by small boats.
Hantavirus, who are the 4 passengers in fiduciary quarantine in Italy: “I’m fine, but I’ll do the tests on Monday”
The outbreak
The Mv Hondius ship departed from Ushuaia (Argentina) on 1 April 2026 and followed a route across the South Atlantic, with numerous stops in remote regions, including Antarctica, South Georgia, Nightingale Island, Tristan da Cunha and Saint Helena.
On April 6, an outbreak of hantavirus, a virus transmitted by rodents that causes serious respiratory or haemorrhagic diseases, broke out on board, first infecting a married couple and then other passengers. Twenty-nine of them had come down before quarantine measures were implemented and are now being monitored.
Passengers will be repatriated
There are currently 8 total cases reported linked to the ship cluster. None of the people on board showed symptoms, but the incubation period of the Andes variant can be up to six weeks.
According to what was announced by government officials, the first to disembark will be Spanish citizens, followed in groups by those of other nationalities. Passengers will then be taken to the airport where they will board direct flights to their respective countries of origin. Thirty crew members will remain on board to sail to the Netherlands where the ship will be disinfected.
According to the WHO, all passengers are “high-risk contacts”
The World Health Organization has defined all people on board as “high risk” contacts and should therefore be actively monitored for 42 days. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director for the prevention of epidemics and pandemics, stressed that the risk for people in general and for the inhabitants of the Canary Islands remains “low”.
Experts from the UN health agency have reassured us that “this is not the beginning of an epidemic”, or worse “a pandemic”. But, they specified, it is possible that further cases linked to the outbreak will be recorded, given the long incubation of the virus. And to ensure timeliness “the sending of 2,500 diagnostic kits from Argentina to laboratories in 5 countries has also been arranged”.
Burioni: “Covid has taught us nothing”. In Italy, 4 people at risk are being monitored
The decision to evacuate the ship’s passengers, sending them home, was criticized by Roberto Burioni, virologist at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan, in his newsletter on Substack. “The ship’s passengers will go ashore. And the incredible will happen” says Burioni in a post on X publishing an excerpt of his article. “Forty days after the departure from Ushuaia, after three deaths, after weeks of isolation and floating quarantine, the oceanic phase of the story is closed. Another, incredibly surreal one begins” he writes.
### HANTAVIRUS UPDATE ### Substack preview, article out tomorrow morning at 7am.
Tomorrow morning the ship’s passengers will go ashore. And the incredible will happen. COVID hasn’t taught us anything. Link in bio. pic.twitter.com/bTFpz7toQr
— Roberto Burioni (@RobertoBurioni) May 9, 2026
“Because among these passengers – we read in the post -, all off the same ship and all with the same biological risk, an American will spend the next six weeks armored in a military hospital, while an Austrian will receive an invitation to stay at home, permission to go out if he feels nervous or needs to go to the doctor, and a phone call a week asking him ‘how are you?’ Does this seem incredible to you? Me too. But that’s how it is.” And it shows, according to Burioni, that “Covid really hasn’t taught us anything”.
Meanwhile, yesterday the Ministry of Health announced that four people are being monitored in Italy. These are passengers on the KLM flight bound for Amsterdam on which a woman infected with the hantavirus got on and then got off after feeling ill. The contact details of the four passengers were acquired by the Ministry of Health which forwarded the information to the competent Regions (Calabria, Campania, Tuscany, Veneto).