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Hantavirus ship evacuation nears completion as 94 flown home

The Japan Times·Alfons Luna·6 months ago
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A British citizen boards a plane bound for the U.K. carrying passengers evacuated from the Dutch flagged hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius at the Tenerife Sur-Reina Sofia airport on the island of Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands on Sunday.

A British citizen boards a plane bound for the U.K. carrying passengers evacuated from the Dutch flagged hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius at the Tenerife Sur-Reina Sofia airport on the island of Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands on Sunday. | AFP-JIJI

Granadilla de Abona, Spain – A complex daylong operation to repatriate occupants of a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak neared completion late Sunday after 94 people of various nationalities were flown home from Spain's Canary Islands.

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.

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