The “MV Hondius” is expected in Tenerife on Sunday. This is still off Cape Verde.Image: keystone
The Canary Islands is holding its breath: the “MV Hondius” is bringing the dangerous hantavirus to Spain. The socialist central government in Madrid is causing additional uncertainty.
May 7, 2026, 5:32 p.mMay 7, 2026, 5:32 p.m
Manuel Meyer, Madrid / ch media
“Of course people are unsettled,” complains José Domingo Regalado, mayor of Granadilla de Abona. The arrival of the cruise ship “MV Hondius”, on which the deadly hantavirus broke out, is expected at the port of the small community in the south of Tenerife on Sunday around 12 p.m.
The 140 passengers remaining on the ship have no symptoms of illness. «But we are worried. “Especially because we hardly get any information about what exactly is supposed to happen and how safe the situation really is,” says Regalado. Granadilla is a “helpful community”. However, on the radio station Cadena SER he demands “medical guarantees and complete transparency”.
The memory of the corona pandemic is still very deep for many residents. The first Covid cases in Spain were registered in the Canary Islands, where almost 3,000 people died as a result. The popular holiday island of Tenerife recorded the most deaths.
What makes people no less unsettled are the political debates. It was the Spanish central government in Madrid that chose Granadilla as the port of call for the contaminated ship. It is an industrial port located close to Tenerife South International Airport, from which cruise passengers are to be quickly transferred to their home countries after an initial medical examination.
Island president was left in the dark
Spain’s socialist Health Minister Mónica García said in Madrid that although the lethality of the virus was high, the risk to the population was low. We are also in constant contact with the island authorities. The conservative President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, apparently knows nothing about this.
Even worse: he only found out through the press that Spain and the World Health Organization (WHO) had decided to accept the cruise ship after Cape Verde and Morocco had refused. He had received neither technical instructions nor medical reports on the measures that now had to be taken.
Meanwhile, a triage center is being set up on Tenerife for the 14 Spanish passengers before they are then taken by military plane to the Gómez Ulloa military hospital near Madrid for quarantine. According to its own information, the Canary Islands government only found out about this later. At the same time, a dispute has broken out within the central government about whether the 14 Spanish passengers actually need to be isolated after their arrival.
The biggest problem, however, is the uncertainty about how many more infected people could be on board undetected, says Canarian government spokesman Alfonso Cabello. Although the number is expected to be low, a larger spread on the current crossing from the Cape Verde Islands to Tenerife cannot be ruled out.
“We don’t understand why the cruise ship has to travel to the Canary Islands for three days to do exactly the same thing that would have been possible in Praia on Cape Verde,” says island President Clavijo angrily. He is calling for an immediate meeting with Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez so that he can reconsider the decision to accept the cruise ship because security measures are not guaranteed.
Search for the passengers who have already departed
The “MV Hondius” began its nature expedition lasting several months in March in Ushuaia in the south of Argentina. On its journey, the ship visited some of the most remote places in the world, including Antarctica. The WHO suspects that the chain of infection started from the Dutch couple, who have since died. While preparations for the ship’s arrival are underway in the Canary Islands, the WHO is trying to locate 23 people who were on board but who left the expedition early. Among them is a Swiss man who is currently hospitalized in Zurich.
With the Swiss, the number of infected people rose to eight – including the three passengers who had already died and a patient hospitalized in South Africa. The eruption began while sailing off the coast of Cape Verde. The virus has an incubation period between seven and 45 days. At the time of departure for Tenerife, the remaining passengers were considered symptom-free. However, it is unclear how many could now be infected.
The so-called Andean variant of the hantavirus has low human-to-human transmission, but a high mortality rate of over 50 percent, explains Canary Islands epidemiologist Amós García Rojas to CH Media. The specialist is already on his way to Tenerife. However, he emphasizes that he sees “no risk of a pandemic or for the population in the Canary Islands” as long as all health protocols are adhered to. (aargauerzeitung.ch)