SPANISH authorities were preparing today to receive more than 140 passengers and crew members on board a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship headed for the Canary Islands, where health officials have said they will perform careful evacuations.

The vessel is expected to reach the Spanish island of Tenerife, off the coast of west Africa, on Saturday or Sunday.

“They will arrive at a completely isolated, cordoned-off area,” said Virginia Barcones, Spain’s head of emergency services on Thursday.

The MV Hondius is a Dutch-flagged vessel and Dutch officials said today that they were also in close contact with the ship’s owner and authorities of countries whose citizens are on board.

The US has agreed to send a plane to the Canary Islands to repatriate its 17 citizens from the cruise ship, Ms Barcones said. The British government also said it will charter a plane to evacuate the nearly two dozen British citizens onboard.

At least three passengers have died, and several others are sick. The World Health Organisation considers the risk to the wider public from the outbreak as low, and today, confirmed that a flight attendant on a plane briefly boarded by an infected cruise passenger had tested negative for hantavirus.

Her possible infection had raised concerns about the virus’s potential transmissibility.