90-Second Read: ‘It was either this or the pool’: Hantavirus ship becomes latest Tenerife tourist attraction

Christened the "rat virus boat" by the internet after three people travelling onboard died of Hantavirus, a disease normally carried by rats and mice, its story has enraptured people all over the world. It took a while for the cause to be diagnosed as Hantavirus. The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus repeated the refrain that the outbreak was "not the start of a Covid pandemic" dozens of times in the lead up to the 24-hour evacuation period in Tenerife. And now, after reaching the Canary Islands shortly before dawn on Sunday, the ship is finally being evacuated, ending the ordeal for the remaining 149 passengers and crew.

The variant is not new, and health bodies have sought to reassure people that it is a known pathogen, not a new disease such as Covid-19. The passengers and crew from 23 countries are being repatriated thanks to an enormous international effort led by the WHO and coordinated by the Spanish government, which offered Tenerife as a base to launch the rescue. But only a PCR test would confirm whether Hantavirus, which has an incubation period of up to eight weeks, is present in their systems. Some are gazing through binoculars while others are taking photos on their phones of a vessel only a few hundreds metres away, anchored near the Granadillo commercial port.

The disease, though not uncommon, is rarely spread person-to-person. There are few parallels with the virus that caused the global pandemic in 2019 but all over the world people have feared what would happen if another disease was able to get out of control. Boatload after boatload of blue plasticky figures appeared, to be loaded on to coaches by health workers in hazmat suits and face masks. Those onboard have had their temperatures taken by WHO tropical medicine doctors and have shown no symptoms of a possible infection.

We were looking at TikTok trying to find out where it was and then we saw the name of the port and came here. Inside, plastic sheets cover the seats and, in scenes reminiscent of the Covid-19 pandemic, hazard tape marks seats that cannot be used. The rest of their luggage needs to remain on the ship to be taken to the Netherlands for decontamination.