WHO Chief to Oversee Evacuation of Hantavirus Cruise Ship Off Tenerife

World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he will personally oversee the evacuation of more than 100 people from a cruise ship facing a hantavirus outbreak.

"I will be there myself," Tedros said in a letter to the people of the Canary Islands, where the ship will anchor off Tenerife. "I intend to travel to Tenerife to observe this operation firsthand, to stand alongside the health workers, port staff, and officials who are making it happen, and to personally pay my respects to an island that has responded to a difficult situation with grace, solidarity, and compassion. Your humanity deserves to be witnessed, not just acknowledged from a distance."

The vessel is heading to Tenerife, part of Spain, and is due to arrive just before dawn Sunday local time, or around midnight U.S. Eastern time, officials said.

Nine people aboard had confirmed or suspected hantavirus cases, and three have died, health officials reported. None of the 147 people now on board, including 60 crew members, show symptoms, according to owner Oceanwide Expeditions.

Seventeen Americans are on the MV Hondius, Oceanwide Expeditions said. They will leave by small boat, reach shore and board a waiting plane provided by the U.S. government under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention oversight. The plane will fly them to the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, the CDC said.

"I'm sure they're very anxious to get home, but (we need) to make sure they do that in the most safe way possible," Maria van Kerkhove, WHO acting director of the Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention, said at a Saturday press conference.

Each country with nationals on board will conduct similar evacuations to waiting planes, the Spanish Health Ministry said.

The WHO recommends isolating removed passengers for 42 days from their last exposure to the virus.

Health experts say the risk of widespread transmission remains very small. The disease typically spreads through close rodent contact and does not pass person to person. Tests confirmed the sickened passengers on the Hondius had the Andes strain, the only variant transmissible between people through close contact.

"I know that when you hear the word 'outbreak' and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest," Tedros said in the letter. "The pain of 2020 is still real, and I do not dismiss it for a single moment. But I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another COVID."

"The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low," he added. "My colleagues and I have said this unequivocally, and I will say it again to you now."

The ship departed Argentina on April 1 for stops at remote south Atlantic islands, including Tristan da Cunha and Saint Helena, both British territories.

The outbreak traces to a Dutch couple who traveled in South America, the only region with the Andes strain, before the cruise. They bird-watched in rodent hotspots with confirmed hantavirus, Oceanwide Expeditions said.

The husband died on the ship April 11. His wife was among 32 who left at Saint Helena. She flew to South Africa and died days later after removal from a KLM Airlines plane due to illness, the airline said.

Dozens who flew on that plane or left at Saint Helena are under observation worldwide, including in the U.S. None in Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, New Jersey or California show symptoms, their state health departments confirmed to CBS News.