J008-CABO VERDE IMAGENES AEREAS CRUCERO HANTAVIRUS

A luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak and marooned since Sunday (May 3) off the coast of Cape Verde departed for Spain on Wednesday (May 6), a Reuters witness said.

Three people travelling on the ship, two of them seriously ill, were evacuated earlier in the day.

The MV Hondius, with nearly 150 people on board, is expected to dock in Spain's Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, within three days, Spain's Health Minister Monica Garcia said,

Those still on board were not presenting any symptoms of the disease, Garcia added.

Once in Tenerife, if they are still healthy, all non-Spanish citizens will be repatriated to their countries, Garcia told a press conference in Madrid.

The 14 Spanish passengers will be quarantined in a military hospital in Madrid, she said.

The duration of the quarantine will depend on when they potentially had contact with the virus, she said, adding that it has a 45-day incubation period.

Three people - a Dutch couple and a German national - have died in the outbreak.

A total of eight people - including a Swiss citizen who has returned home and is being treated in Zurich - are suspected to have contracted the virus, with three of them confirmed by laboratory testing, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

Argentina's health ministry will carry out rodent trapping and analysis in the southern city of Ushuaia, the origin point of the cruise ship hit by the outbreak, it said in a statement.

Officials are reconstructing the itinerary of the Dutch citizens who travelled in Argentina and Chile and later presented symptoms of hantavirus on the cruise, the statement said.

No associated cases have been found in Argentina.