MADRID (AP) — Spanish authorities are preparing to receive over 140 passengers and crew members from the MV Hondius, a cruise ship currently affected by a hantavirus outbreak. The vessel is en route to the Canary Islands and is expected to dock at the island of Tenerife on Saturday or Sunday.

Virginia Barcones, Spain's head of emergency services, announced on Thursday that the passengers would arrive at a completely isolated, cordoned-off area. The MV Hondius, which is under a Dutch flag, has officials in the Netherlands in close contact with the ship's owner and authorities from the nations of the passengers on board. In total, 17 U.S. citizens and nearly two dozen British passengers are among those being evacuated, with plans for the United States and the British government to send planes to assist in the repatriation efforts.

At least three passengers have died due to the outbreak, and several others are reported to be sick. The World Health Organization (WHO) assesses the risk to the general public as low. They confirmed that a flight attendant who came into contact with an infected passenger had tested negative for hantavirus, alleviating initial concerns about the virus's transmissibility.

Hantavirus is typically transferred through the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and is not easily spread between humans. Symptoms can emerge between one and eight weeks after exposure. As of Thursday, the cruise ship operator, Netherlands-based Oceanwide Expeditions, stated that none of the remaining passengers or crew members on board are currently symptomatic.

Health authorities across four continents are actively tracking passengers who disembarked the ship before the outbreak was identified. They are also tracing individuals who may have come into contact with these passengers after their departure. On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger's death aboard the ship, over two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left without any follow-up contact tracing.

The WHO confirmed that it was not until May 2 that hantavirus was first identified in a passenger. A KLM flight attendant who tested negative was on a flight from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on April 25 and fell ill afterward; she was placed in isolation at an Amsterdam hospital. The Dutch woman who was a cruise passenger and had briefly boarded the flight was too ill to continue to Europe and was removed from the plane in Johannesburg, where she later passed away.

The Dutch public health service is currently conducting contract tracing for passengers on the flight who had interactions with the ill woman. As of Friday, U.K. health authorities indicated that a third British national is suspected of having hantavirus, located on Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory. The condition of this individual remains unknown. Of the two other Britons confirmed positive for the virus, one is hospitalized in the Netherlands, while the other is receiving treatment in South Africa.

Authorities in South Africa are focusing their efforts on tracing contacts linked to any passengers who departed the ship. Their primary focus has been an April 25 flight from St. Helena to Johannesburg, which occurred the day after some of the passengers disembarked on the island.