Granadilla de Abona (Spain) (AFP) - Occupants of a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak that has sparked international alarm began flying home from Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday in a complex repatriation operation.

Three passengers from the MV Hondius – a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman – have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.

No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is endemic in Argentina, where the ship departed in April.

But health officials have stressed that the risk for global public health is low and played down comparisons to a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The final flight to evacuate most of the ship’s nearly 150 passengers and crew will leave for Australia on Monday, before the ship continues to the Netherlands, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said.

Passengers wearing blue medical suits began disembarking the Dutch-flagged vessel onto smaller boats to reach the port of Granadilla on Tenerife, AFP journalists saw.

The evacuees then boarded a red Spanish army bus and travelled to Tenerife South airport in a convoy with Civil Guard vehicles. A protective board separated the driver from the passengers.

The evacuees changed into new protective equipment before boarding their repatriation flight, the first of which left carrying 14 Spaniards who will observe quarantine at a military hospital in Madrid.

“The operation is going very well,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at the port.

Garcia said a Dutch flight that would also take citizens from Germany, Belgium, Greece and part of the crew would follow the Spanish departure.

Separate flights for Canadian, Turkish, French, British, Irish and US citizens are also planned for Sunday.

- Race against time -

Regional authorities have warned that the operation must be completed by Monday, when adverse weather conditions will force the ship to leave.

Canary Islands regional authorities have consistently resisted taking in the ship, which was only authorised to anchor offshore instead of docking in the port.

But all passengers are asymptomatic and underwent a final medical assessment before their disembarkation, Garcia told reporters on Tenerife shortly before the operation began.

Spanish authorities have insisted there will be no contact with the local population in Tenerife.

AFP journalists at Granadilla saw white tents erected along the quay and that the police, some in protective medical suits, had sealed off part of the small industrial port.

Spain “is doing what it must do, with technical and scientific rigour and full transparency, with institutional loyalty and with international cooperation”, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Sunday.

Pope Leo XIV, who is due to visit the Canary Islands next month, thanked the Atlantic archipelago for its solidarity during a Sunday prayer at the Vatican.

- International concern -

The only hantavirus type that is transmissible between humans – the Andes virus – has been confirmed among those who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.

The WHO said Friday it had confirmed six cases out of eight suspected ones. There are no suspected cases remaining on the ship.

The MV Hondius had arrived at Tenerife early on Sunday morning from Cape Verde, where three infected people had been evacuated to Europe earlier in the week.

It left Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.

The WHO believes the first infection occurred before the start of the expedition, followed by transmission between humans onboard the vessel.

But Argentine provincial health official Juan Petrina has said there was an “almost zero chance” the Dutch man linked to the outbreak contracted the disease in Ushuaia based on the virus’s weeks-long incubation period, among other factors.

Health authorities in several countries have been tracking passengers who had already disembarked and anyone who may have come into contact with them.