By Corina Pons and Leonardo Benassatto
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Spain, May 11 (Reuters) - The last six passengers and some of the crew of the hantavirus-hit MV Hondius anchored off Tenerife were readying to disembark on Monday as the ship's captain praised their patience and discipline during an "extremely challenging" few weeks.
The final passengers - four Australians, one Briton who lives in Australia and a New Zealander - were waiting to be taken off the MV Hondius, a polar expedition ship, in small boats for transfer to Tenerife where a flight would take them to the Netherlands to spend time in quarantine.
Nineteen crew members from the ship and three doctors who treated them were due to take off for the Netherlands on an earlier flight, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said.
The MV Hondius was then due to continue its journey with 26 crew members to the Netherlands - its flag state - where it would be disinfected, health authorities said.
"I could not imagine sailing through these circumstances with a better group of people, guests and crew alike," Captain Jan Dobrogowski, from the Netherlands, said in a video posted on Oceanwide Expeditions' website.
The disembarkation caps a complex operation that has so far resulted in 94 people being evacuated and repatriated to their countries of residence, 41 days after the MV Hondius set off from southern Argentina and nine days after the first positive test result for the respiratory viral infection.
Three people have died since the start of the outbreak - a Dutch couple and a German national.
The World Health Organization said on Monday there were now seven confirmed cases of the Andes strain of hantavirus, and two other suspected cases - one who died before being tested, and one on Tristan da Cunha, a remote South Atlantic island where there were no tests available.
FRENCH WOMAN'S CONDITION DETERIORATING
The confirmed cases include a French passenger, who tested positive after the ship docked in the Canary Islands on Sunday. Her condition is deteriorating, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist said.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said one of the 17 Americans being repatriated had also tested mildly positive for the Andes virus. The Spanish Health Ministry said a test of another sample of the American at a different lab had been inconclusive.
A second American also had mild symptoms.
As the MV Hondius approached the Canary Islands late last week amid protests from the regional government about the risk of the virus spreading, Spain's health minister and the WHO had said all passengers were "asymptomatic".
Results of tests on 14 Spanish passengers currently quarantining at a military hospital in Madrid were due later on Monday, Spain's Health Ministry added.
'THIS IS NOT COVID'
The virus is usually spread by wild rodents but also transmittable person-to-person in rare cases of close contact.
However, health officials say that because the virus does not spread easily between people, there is little risk to the general population, urging calm to a public scarred from the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The MV Hondius had been carrying 147 passengers and crew from 23 countries when a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses among passengers was first reported to the WHO on May 3.
By then, 34 other passengers had disembarked on islands in the Atlantic before the cruise ship headed north to Cape Verde, where news of the outbreak emerged.
It was first detected by health officials in Johannesburg on May 2 treating a British man who disembarked the ship. That was some three weeks after the first passenger, a Dutchman, had died.
The luxury cruise ship left for Spain's Canary Islands on May 6 after Madrid had accepted a WHO request to manage its evacuation.
The WHO has recommended a 42-day quarantine for all passengers, its director of epidemic and pandemic management, Maria Van Kerkhove, told a briefing.
On Monday, the head of the Italian pharmaceutical lobby, Marcello Cattani, told a conference in Milan there was little need to develop a hantavirus vaccine.
"Only a small number of citizens, fortunately, are involved," he said. "The path to achieving a vaccine is absolutely feasible, but we are confident there will be no need for one because it will not go from an outbreak to an epidemic or a pandemic."
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus, Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, David Latona, Aislinn Laing and Charlie Devereux; Editing by Stephen Coates and Gareth Jones)
