Last evacuation flights for passengers of hantavirus-hit cruise ship to depart Monday

The final two evacuation flights for passengers aboard a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak docked near the Spanish island of Tenerife were scheduled to depart Monday afternoon, Spain's Health Minister Monica Garcia said Sunday.

Garcia told reporters that 94 passengers had already been evacuated from the vessel.

An Australian repatriation flight will carry six passengers, while a Dutch flight will take 18 people, including travelers from countries that did not arrange their own evacuation flights, officials said, according to local media.

The first to disembark on Sunday were 14 Spanish nationals who were flown by a military aircraft to Madrid and transferred to a military hospital for quarantine and testing.

The evacuation came amid controversy and objections from Canary Islands President Fernando Clavijo.

Spanish officials dismissed concerns that infected rodents could reach shore from the ship, saying the possibility of an Andean rodent swimming to the Canary coast was “zero.”

The Hantavirus is a rare disease usually transmitted through infected rodents or their droppings, though the strain responsible for this outbreak can also spread between humans.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has classified the outbreak as a Level 3 emergency response, the agency’s lowest emergency activation level.

The outbreak, involving the Andes strain of hantavirus, has resulted in five confirmed cases, including three deaths, according to officials from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Scientists confirmed the outbreak was caused by the rare Andes variant of hantavirus, the only known strain capable of human-to-human transmission, usually through close contact.

The WHO said two passengers who later died had traveled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay before boarding the ship.

CDC officials said passengers will be monitored for about six weeks, reflecting the incubation period of the virus, while health authorities in several US states are also tracking travelers who had already left the vessel before the outbreak was confirmed.