A French passenger who was evacuated from MV Hondius tested positive for the virus and her condition was deteriorating, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist said on Monday.
The US Department of Health and Human Services said on Sunday that one of the 17 Americans being repatriated had tested mildly positive for the Andes strain of the virus, while a second had shown mild symptoms.
The last 24 passengers still on board MV Hondius were set to be evacuated on Monday afternoon from the cruise ship, now anchored near Spain's Atlantic island of Tenerife, according to Spanish authorities co-ordinating the evacuations.
The move will cap a complex operation that has resulted in 94 people being evacuated and repatriated to their countries of residence, 41 days after the Hondius set off from southern Argentina and nine days after the first positive test result for the respiratory viral infection.
Three people have died since the start of the outbreak - a Dutch couple and a German national.
Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia told a media conference late on Sunday that a plane would leave for the Netherlands on Monday with 18 passengers from countries that did not send their own repatriation aircraft.
A second and final flight would depart for Australia about 6pm on Monday (3am on Tuesday AEST) with six passengers, Garcia said, including one from New Zealand and others hailing from unspecified Asian countries.
After the evacuations, the ship would sail for the Netherlands, its flag state, Garcia said, adding that about 30 crew members would remain on board.
Reuters footage on Monday showed the ship refuelling at Tenerife's port of Granadilla before the voyage.
Once there and with everyone disembarked, including the dead German national still in the ship's onboard morgue, the vessel will be thoroughly disinfected.
The Hondius was carrying 147 passengers and crew from 23 countries when a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses among passengers was first reported to the WHO on May 3.
By then, 34 other passengers had departed the vessel, which first sailed from Argentina in March with stops in the Antarctic and other locations before heading north to waters off Cape Verde west of the African continent, where the vessel was briefly held after news of the outbreak emerged.
The outbreak of the virus, usually spread by wild rodents but also transmittable person-to-person in rare cases of close contact, was first detected by health officials in Johannesburg on May 2 treating a British man who was taken into intensive care after disembarking the ship.
That was some three weeks after the first passenger, the Dutchman, had died.
The luxury cruise ship left for Spain's Canary Islands from the coast of Cape Verde on May 6 after Madrid agreed - at the request of both the WHO and the European Union - to manage the evacuation of passengers.
The WHO has recommended a 42-day quarantine for all passengers from the boat from May 10, its director of epidemic and pandemic management, Maria Van Kerkhove, told a briefing.
Health officials have urged calm, reminding a public scarred from the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic that this virus is far less contagious and poses little risk to the general population.
with AP
