WHO chief due in Canaries to coordinate hantavirus ship evacuation

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will accompany Spain's health and interior ministers to a command post there "to ensure coordination between administrations, health control, and the application of the planned surveillance and response protocols", the sources said.

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.

The only hantavirus strain that can transmit from person to person -- Andes virus -- has been confirmed among those who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.

The Dutch-flagged vessel, which has around 150 people on board, is expected to arrive at the Spanish Canary Island of Tenerife on Sunday. Special flights will then take passengers to their home countries. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), speaks to journalists during a press conference at the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 6, 2023.

Earlier Friday, the WHO said that the hantavirus outbreak posed a minimal risk to the general public.

"This is a dangerous virus, but only to the person who's really infected, and the risk to the general population remains absolutely low," WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters.

A picture was emerging from MV Hondius where "even those who have been sharing cabins don't seem to be both infected in some cases", when one has fallen sick, he added.

"The virus is not that contagious that it easily jumps from person to person," he said.

The WHO said Friday there were six confirmed out of eight suspected cases of the virus so far. There are no suspected cases remaining on the ship.

KLM flight attendant negative

A flight attendant on the Dutch airline KLM, who came into contact with an infected passenger from the cruise ship and later showed mild symptoms, tested negative for hantavirus, the WHO said Friday.

The passenger -- the wife of the first person to die in the outbreak -- had briefly been on a plane bound from Johannesburg to the Netherlands on April 25, but was removed before take-off.

She died the following day in a Johannesburg hospital.

Spanish authorities said a woman on that flight was being tested for hantavirus, having developed symptoms at home in eastern Spain. She is in isolation in hospital, said health secretary Javier Padilla.

"This is a pretty unlikely case," he told reporters: someone "two rows behind the personwho died with hantavirus".

Spanish interior ministry sources said a South African woman who was also on the flight "is currently asymptomatic in South Africa after staying in Barcelona for a week before returning to her country".

Two Singapore residents who had been on the ship tested negative for the disease but would remain in quarantine, the city state's authorities said Friday.

(With newswires)