Washington Post More than 140 people remain on the Hondius, which will take about three days to reach the Spanish archipelago for screening. A local official has criticized the plan. Three people were evacuated Wednesday from the cruise ship facing a hantavirus outbreak in the Atlantic Ocean, as Swiss health authorities confirmed another case in Zurich, in a passenger who had already left the Hondius. The ship, which has been sitting off the coast of Cape Verde but not allowed to dock, is now set to head for Spain’s Canary Islands.
The Swiss case brings the total number of suspected or confirmed cases linked to the outbreak to eight and marks the first identification of the virus in Europe. The man had responded to an email from Ocean Expeditions, the ship’s operator, and presented himself to a hospital in Switzerland, the World Health Organization said in a post on X. The WHO is working to carry out contact tracing and “ensure that those potentially exposed are monitored and that any further disease spread is limited,” it said.