Daily Mail57%
Evacuation of rat virus cruise FINALLY under way despite furious protests from locals... but Americans are forced to wait on board 3%
By Lauren Acton-Taylor0%
5/10/2026, 12:22:29 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Appeal to Authority, and Optimism Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 19.8% saturation with 150 hits. Analysis detected 1,100 faulty-reasoning hits from 759 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 14.3% and a BS Rank of 3% (16,419 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 97.70% of the article peer group.
Terrified American cruise passengers trapped on board the ship stricken by deadly Hantavirus have been forced to wait on board as Spanish authorities prioritized evacuating their own nationals.
Passengers and crew are finally being evacuated from the luxury cruise ship and are in the process of being sent home, despite furious protests from locals.
Spanish passengers - 13 vacationers and one crew member - were allowed to leave the MV Hondius first in a small boat to Tenerife around 9.30am, according to Spain's Health Minister Mónica García.
The 17 American travelers on board will be allowed to leave afterwards, before being taken on a repatriation flight to the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska for assessment and quarantine.
Some 147 passengers were on board the ship in total, and the process to safely transport each person home is expected to take around a week.
Ferries were seen carrying groups from the infected cruise ship at the Port of Granadilla to the island, where they were filed onto buses and transported to the airport.
Government officials emphasized that the evacuated groups would have no contact with the public, despite reports that the passengers were not showing symptoms of the virus.
The World Health Organization recommended a 42-day quarantine for those onboard the boat, which saw its first confirmed case of the outbreak on May 2.
In an update on Friday, WHO confirmed that eight passengers no longer on the ship had fallen ill, with six of them confirmed to have contracted the hantavirus.
Four remain hospitalized in South Africa, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
A suspected case in Germany tested negative, while a Spanish woman, who had flown on the same flight as a patient who later died from the virus, tested negative on Saturday.
Before the boat evacuated, medical officials ran tests on those onboard the ship, García said, CNN reported.
Three people - a Dutch couple and a German national- were reported to have died from the virus, a rare disease typically caused by exposure to infected rat waste, after the cruise ship left Argentina last month.
The UK Health Security Agency confirmed on Friday that a British national disembarked from the cruise ship MV Hondius on to the island, where they live, with a suspected case of hantavirus.
A specialist team from the British Army have been parachuted on to the British overseas territory Tristan da Cunha - the world's most remote inhabited island - with medical personnel, aid and equipment to treat the Briton suspected to have hantavirus who disembarked there.
Six paratroopers, an RAF consultant and Army nurse from 16 Air Assault Brigade parachuted, while oxygen supplies and medical aid was dropped on to the remote island, which is normally only accessible by boat.
The RAF A400M transport aircraft flew from RAF Brize Norton to Ascension Island, supported by an RAF Voyager, before heading to Tristan da Cunha.
The British Ministry of Defence said it was the first time medical personnel had been parachuted in to provide humanitarian support.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said: 'We will continue to work closely with international authorities and the Tristan da Cunha administration, keeping those affected informed and ensuring the right support is in place in the UK and across the Overseas Territories.'
The US, Germany, France, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands are nations included in the operation and will send aircrafts to return the passengers and crew members home.
'Once disembarked, they will be transferred immediately to their allocated aircraft,' the Dutch firm said.
The sequence of disembarkation is being coordinated with the arrival of repatriation flights.
Oceanwide Expeditions is not involved in the planning and facilitation of guest screening and repatriation.
As outlined by the WHO, in partnership with several international organizations and governments, guests will be transported by air to their respective countries, where they will enter quarantine procedures.
Respective national authorities determine these procedures.
No quarantine of non-Spanish nationals will take place in Spain.
After all guests and limited crew have disembarked, m/v Hondius will bunker and take on necessary supplies at Santa Cruz, Tenerife.
Following this, the vessel will transit to the port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands with the remaining crew members aboard.
Further details regarding the vessel's arrival in Rotterdam will be provided when available.
The expected sailing time to Rotterdam is around 5 days.'
The Daily Mail reached out to WHO, the CDC, Spain's Ministry of Health and Ports of Tenerife for comment.
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