On a dusty hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in the south of Tenerife, groups of tourists and locals are gathered to witness one of the island’s best new attractions.
Some are gazing through binoculars while others are taking photos on their phones of a vessel only a few hundreds metres away, anchored near the Granadillo commercial port.
It is the MV Hondius, the small cruise ship at the centre of a giant global commotion.
Christened the “rat virus boat” by the internet after three people travelling onboard died of hantavirus, a disease normally carried by rats and mice, its story has enraptured people all over the world.
And now, after reaching the Canary Islands shortly before dawn on Sunday, the ship is finally being evacuated, ending the ordeal for the remaining 149 passengers and crew.
Tourists Amy Byres (left) and Emma Armitage. Photograph: Robyn Vinter/The Guardian
The scene is watched from the hire car of Amy Byres and Emma Armitage from Sheffield, on holiday in Tenerife for Byres’s 22nd birthday.
“We’ve got some time to kill before our flight later,” Armitage said.
“It was either this or lay by the pool all day,” added Byres.
The pair said they had spent their holiday fascinated by the story of the passengers trapped on board and confined to cabins, in between their whale-watching and quad biking activities.
“We saw this at the start of our trip – we arrived on Monday – and we’ve been following it all week on TikTok,” Byres said. “We were looking at TikTok trying to find out where it was and then we saw the name of the port and came here. It’s just really interesting, isn’t it?”
The novelty has attracted dozens of others who came to the island to enjoy sun, sand and cerveza (beer) – and stayed for the international rescue operation.
But down at the dock, the mood is more sober. First, only a handful of Spanish passengers appear, looking dazed and bewildered, wearing face and hair coverings and large blue ponchos over their clothes.
Clutched in one hand are small plastic bags containing only a few possessions. The rest of their luggage needs to remain on the ship to be taken to the Netherlands for decontamination.
It is the first time many of them have been outside since they were locked down in their cabins several days ago, after the deaths of a Dutch couple and a German passenger.
It took a while for the cause to be diagnosed as hantavirus. The disease, though not uncommon, is rarely spread person-to-person. The variant is not new, and health bodies have sought to reassure people that it is a known pathogen, not a new disease such as Covid-19.
There are few parallels with the virus that caused the global pandemic in 2019 but all over the world people have feared what would happen if another disease was able to get out of control.
The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeated the refrain that the outbreak was “not the start of a Covid pandemic” dozens of times in the lead up to the 24-hour evacuation period in Tenerife.
Map of Hondius route
The passengers and crew from 23 countries are being repatriated thanks to an enormous international effort led by the WHO and coordinated by the Spanish government, which offered Tenerife as a base to launch the rescue.
It was Spain’s obligation under international law to offer the Canaries’ assistance as one of the closest territories that had the resources to help and, on Sunday, the plan appeared to be being successfully executed.
Boatload after boatload of blue plasticky figures appeared, to be loaded on to coaches by health workers in hazmat suits and face masks.
Inside, plastic sheets cover the seats and, in scenes reminiscent of the Covid-19 pandemic, hazard tape marks seats that cannot be used. Those leaving the ship are not allowed to sit next to each other.
But what happens when each passenger gets home is a matter of some contention. While the WHO recommends each passenger isolate for 45 days from the last contact point, 6 May, it cannot enforce that. The UK and Spain have put in place hospital quarantines for those coming off the ship but many countries have not.
Causing further concern is the absence of testing. Those onboard have had their temperatures taken by WHO tropical medicine doctors and have shown no symptoms of a possible infection. But only a PCR test would confirm whether hantavirus – which has an incubation period of up to eight weeks – is present in their systems. Every country would need to carry out their own.
Among the media brought to the island by the MV Hondius’s arrival, questions were being asked about whether this was enough.
Tedros was asked at a press conference at the Granadilla port late Saturday night whether allowing passengers to travel all over the world and relying on them to self-isolate with no oversight could cause further outbreaks.
“Based on our assessment, what you have said is not going to happen,” he told the media.
The planned approach by the US caused particular alarm, after the country’s withdrawal from the WHO last year. Returning passengers to the country are being asked to self isolate, something an American journalist asked Javier Padilla Bernáldez, the Spanish secretary of state for health, for his opinion on.
He said the European Commission and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control were “trying to achieve a certain degree of coordination, and not a high variation among the different countries”.
“But every country has its own confidences,” he said.
