The World Health Organization's director-general said Saturday he will travel personally to Tenerife as 150 passengers are evacuated from a cruise ship carrying an outbreak of the Andes strain of hantavirus, three of whom have already died. Seventeen of those passengers are American citizens.
The ship, the M/V Hondius, is set to anchor off the coast of Spain's Canary Islands on Sunday. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted a lengthy message to X on Saturday morning addressing public fears, comparing the situation explicitly to the COVID-19 pandemic and urging people not to draw the same conclusions.
"I know you are worried. I know that when you hear the word 'outbreak' and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest," Ghebreyesus wrote. "The pain of 2020 is still real, and I do not dismiss it for a single moment. But I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another COVID-19. The current public health risk from Hantavirus remains low."
He confirmed his plan to travel to the island directly. "I intend to travel to Tenerife to observe this operation firsthand, to stand alongside the health workers, port staff, and officials who are making it happen, and to personally pay my respects to an island that has responded to a difficult situation with grace, solidarity, and compassion," he wrote.
Despite the reassurances, Ghebreyesus did not minimize the severity of what happened aboard the ship. "The virus aboard the MV Hondius is the Andes strain of hantavirus. It is serious. Three people have lost their lives, and our hearts go out to their families," he wrote, while again stating that the broader public health risk remains low.
The U.S. government's plan for its 17 citizens involves evacuation to a military base in Nebraska for quarantine and monitoring, according to Fox News Digital, which previously reported the arrangement. President Donald Trump commented on the outbreak Friday, telling reporters the situation appeared to be under control. "We have very good people looking at it. It seems to be okay. They know the virus very well. They've worked with it for a long time. They know it very well. Not easy to pass on. So we hope that's true," Trump said.
Hantavirus does not spread person to person the way respiratory viruses like COVID-19 do. The Andes strain, found primarily in South America, is one of the few hantavirus variants with documented cases of human-to-human transmission, though health officials say it remains difficult to contract. The virus is typically transmitted through contact with infected rodents or their droppings, and the specific circumstances of how passengers aboard the Hondius were exposed have not been publicly confirmed.
The WHO has said unequivocally that the risk to the general public is low, but the visible nature of the evacuation, a ship anchoring off a populated island with passengers being transferred under medical supervision, has drawn widespread attention. Ghebreyesus acknowledged that directly in his message. "Viruses do not care about politics, and they do not respect borders. The best immunity any of us has is solidarity," he wrote.
The evacuation operation was expected to begin Sunday when the Hondius reached the Canary Islands. Ghebreyesus said he planned to be present on the island to observe the process in person.
