Two more MV Hondius passengers test positive for Andes hantavirus amid global repatriation

Authorities racing to empty the Dutch expedition cruise ship MV Hondius after its arrival at the Port of Granadilla de Abona on Tenerife on Sunday, May 10, 2026 reported at least two additional positive or laboratory-flagged cases tied to passengers already in the repatriation pipeline — amplifying concern during one of the largest multi-national civilian evacuations organised since the COVID-19 Diamond Princess episode, even as the World Health Organization and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control continued to classify general-population risk as low.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services said one of the seventeen American passengers evacuated that day returned a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) result that United States officials classified as mildly positive for the Andes strain of hantavirus, while a second passenger showed mild symptoms. Both travelled in the aircraft's biocontainment units "out of an abundance of caution," according to HHS. The mildly positive passenger was slated for the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit in Omaha; the symptomatic passenger had developed a cough on May 6 that resolved the following day, and European clinicians did not classify that individual as a probable case under their rubric — a distinction that matters for cross-border contact tracing.

Separately, French Health Minister Stéphanie Rist told France Inter on Monday, May 11 that a French woman who had been aboard the Hondius tested positive for hantavirus after developing symptoms during her return flight from Tenerife to Paris. CNN, citing Rist, reported that the patient's condition deteriorated overnight and that she was receiving care in a specialist hospital. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu had said on Sunday that one of five French nationals on the charter showed symptoms during the flight and that all five were placed in strict isolation pending testing.

Case-count context — and why the numbers lag the headlines

The ECDC's official snapshot as of 14:00 Central European Time on May 10 listed eight outbreak-associated cases on the vessel-linked cluster — six laboratory-confirmed and two probable — with three deaths. That tally does not automatically include the May 11 French confirmation or the disputed United States weak-positive interpretation; national notifications typically arrive at Stockholm on a 24-to-48-hour lag. Newsorga's read: the "two more positives" framing in wire reporting reflects real-time national laboratory notifications during evacuation, not necessarily an immediate revision to the ECDC headline count.

The Spanish–United States disagreement over the American PCR

The Spanish Ministry of Health said in a Monday statement that while United States authorities treated one evacuee's result as a "weak" positive, European officials considered that particular test inconclusive — one laboratory returned a weak positive and a second laboratory returned negative. Washington nonetheless managed the passenger as a confirmed-positive pathway case for transport and hospital allocation. The dispute is medically subtle — borderline cycle-threshold positives are common in respiratory-virus diagnostics — but diplomatically sharp, because it determines which country's contact-tracing rules apply to co-passengers on the Tenerife–Omaha charter.

How Sunday's repatriation unfolded

Spanish authorities said ninety-four passengers across nineteen nationalities moved off the ship on Sunday alone, part of a choreographed sequence — small boats from ship to shore, bus convoys to airports, chartered flights — that Spanish Health Minister Mónica García told reporters had proceeded "according to plan." BBC reporting placed more than ninety tourists on outbound flights that Sunday. The MV Hondius had arrived carrying roughly 147 people in CNN's accounting — crew and passengers combined — down from higher counts earlier in the voyage as governments had already extracted medically fragile individuals.

Flight corridors publicly confirmed by CNN, BBC and national governments included:

• United States: eighteen people — seventeen Americans plus one British national resident in the United States — into Omaha (Newsorga companion coverage).
• France: five nationals from Tenerife to Le Bourget, onward to Bichat Hospital in Paris for seventy-two hours of inpatient assessment and forty-five days of supervised home isolation under foreign-ministry protocols.
• Spain: fourteen nationals into Torrejón de Ardoz military airbase east of Madrid, then individual-room isolation at a military hospital with PCR testing on arrival and again seven days later.
• United Kingdom: twenty British passengers plus one German national resident in the UK and one Japanese national flown at Tokyo's request — consolidated monitoring at Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral, with specialist assessment before up to forty-five days of isolation.
• Netherlands: twenty-six passengers and crew including eight Dutch nationals on one inbound flight.
• Australia, Turkey, Ireland and additional rotations: further charters were scheduled Sunday and Monday, with Spain signalling final evacuation waves into Monday afternoon.

Why Andes virus matters for a cruise ship

Rodent-borne hantaviruses usually spill over through aerosolised urine or droppings. Andes virus — the strain WHO linked to this cluster — is exceptional because documented person-to-person transmission can occur through close, prolonged contact with a symptomatic patient. That single fact turned an expedition ship's communal corridors, dining rooms and cabin ventilation into a plausible transmission environment in ways that do not apply to Sin Nombre virus in North America. It also justified biocontainment transport even when diagnostic certainty was disputed.

Political friction in the Canary Islands

Canary Islands regional president Fernando Clavijo had publicly opposed berthing the vessel at Tenerife, citing fears for island residents — fears amplified when positive tests began appearing during outbound flights. Port workers demonstrated over risk communication. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeatedly stressed the outbreak is "not another Covid-19," attempting to decouple public anxiety from 2020 muscle memory.

What happens next on the ship

Oceanwide Expeditions — the Hondius operator — said remaining crew would eventually sail the vessel to Rotterdam for deep disinfection after passenger offload, with luggage reunited later under contamination protocols. One deceased passenger's remains were expected to repatriate under strict biocontainment handling.

Editorial note — how Newsorga is counting this story

This article deliberately separates (a) laboratory confirmations announced during active evacuation — the United States and France developments — from (b) the ECDC official May 10 integration window. Readers should expect ECDC and WHO dashboards to tick upward as Monday's French confirmation and any revised United States classification feed into EU-wide surveillance. Newsorga will update when Stockholm publishes a revised aggregate.

For upstream dockside detail and index-case reconstruction, see Newsorga's May 10 disembarkation narrative; for the United States domestic monitoring pathway, see the Omaha companion piece linked above.