Spain readies for evacuations as a hantavirus-hit cruise ship heads for Canary Islands

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MADRID (AP) — Spanish authorities on Friday were preparing to receive more than 140 passengers and crew members on board a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship headed for the Canary Islands, where health officials have said they will perform careful evacuations.

The vessel is expected to reach the Spanish island of Tenerife, off the coast of West Africa, on Saturday or Sunday.

“They will arrive at a completely isolated, cordoned-off area,” said Virginia Barcones, Spain's head of emergency services, on Thursday.

Spain is coordinating with governments whose citizens are on board the ship about evacuation plans, Barcones said.

The United States has agreed to send a plane to the Canary Islands to repatriate its 17 citizens from the cruise ship, she said. The British government also said it will charter a plane to evacuate the nearly two dozen British citizens still on the MV Hondius.

At least three passengers have died, and several others are sick. The World Health Organization says the risk to the wider public from the outbreak is low.

Hantavirus is usually spread by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and isn’t easily transmitted between people. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.

None of the remaining passengers or crew on the ship is currently symptomatic, the Netherlands-based Oceanwide Expeditions cruise ship company said Thursday.

Health authorities across four continents were continuing to track down and monitor passengers who disembarked the ship before the deadly outbreak was detected, and are trying to trace others who may have come into contact with them since then.

On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, the ship’s operator and Dutch officials said Thursday.

On Friday, U.K. health authorities said a third British national is suspected to have the hantavirus.

The U.K. Health Security Agency said the suspected case is on Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory in the south Atlantic where the ship stopped in April.

There was no word on their condition.

Two other Britons who were on the ship have been confirmed to have the virus. One is hospitalized in the Netherlands and the other in South Africa.

Authorities in South Africa are also trying to trace contacts of any passengers who previously got off the ship. They have focused mainly on an April 25 flight from St. Helena to Johannesburg, the day after passengers disembarked there.