TENERIFE, Spain — The head of the World Health Organization on Saturday made an appeal to locals in Tenerife to remain calm as the Spanish island prepared to receive passengers from a hantavirus-hit cruise ship that has left three people dead and sparked growing local outrage.

Residents have taken to the streets in recent days to protest the impending arrival of the MV Hondius to the Canary Islands after the Spanish government overruled local leaders to grant permission for the ship to anchor offshore Sunday. Many on the tourism-reliant island worry that even a carefully coordinated disembarkation could harm the region’s image and economy.

Protests continued Friday, with residents chanting, “Yes to tourism, no to the virus.”

Eight cases of hantavirus have been linked to the outbreak aboard the ship, according to the latest WHO update Saturday, and three people have died.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued a direct appeal to locals Saturday, reassuring them that Sunday’s operation posed little risk to the public.

Though the virus is “serious,” he said, “the risk to you, living your daily life in Tenerife, is low. This is the WHO’s assessment, and we do not make it lightly.”

He stressed that the WHO asked Spain to accept the ship under a “legally binding framework,” adding that nearly 150 passengers and crew from 23 countries have been at sea for weeks.

“Some of them grieving, all of them frightened, all of them longing for home,” Tedros said. “Tenerife has been chosen because it has the medical capacity, the infrastructure and the humanity to help them reach safety.”

The ship is expected to anchor offshore early Sunday. Most of the passengers and crew members will be ferried ashore at the Granadilla port in small boats and taken directly to planes to repatriation flights in sealed, guarded vehicles, Tedros said.

“You will not encounter them,” he assured residents. “Your families will not encounter them.”

Spanish citizens are expected to disembark first, according to Spanish Health Minister Mónica Garcia, who said at a news briefing Saturday evening that "everything is ready" for the arrival of the ship. All passengers will wear FFP2 masks, she added.

Tedros also said he would travel to Tenerife to “observe this operation firsthand, to stand alongside the health workers, port staff and officials who are making it happen.”

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the WHO, told the media in a briefing Saturday that health screenings aboard the ship continue and that anyone showing symptoms will be taken to the Netherlands for treatment. Passengers and crew members without symptoms will be flow to their home countries, she said.

No one currently aboard the ship has any symptoms, and contact tracing is underway to determine those who were likely to have been exposed. Everyone on the vessel is still considered a “high-risk contact,” Van Kerkhove said.

“The goal” is for all of the repatriation flights to take place Sunday and Monday, Van Kerkhove said.

Several nations, including the U.S., Germany, France, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands, have sent planes to evacuate their citizens, Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said Saturday.

Thirty crew members will stay aboard the ship and sail to the Netherlands for the disinfection process, along with the body of one of the passengers who died.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has deployed a team to Tenerife to meet the 17 Americans who are due to disembark from the ship. They will be flown on a flight arranged by the State Department to a specialist quarantine facility in Nebraska previously used to house patients in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Their quarantine period is unclear. Dr. Michael Wadman, director of the National Quarantine Unit, has said the duration will be determined after an “epidemiological assessment.”

Van Kerkhove said Saturday that the WHO is recommending “active monitoring and follow-up” for all passengers and crew members for 42 days from their “last point of exposure” to confirmed cases.

Seventeen U.S. citizens are aboard the cruise ship, and seven others have already returned to the U.S., a CDC official said Saturday. All are being tracked by the CDC, the official said.

The Americans aboard the ship will be taken to Nebraska for monitoring and assessment, but they will not be placed under quarantine, the official said. He did not specify how long they will be kept in Nebraska but said the hope is that it will be a short stay.

The overall monitoring period will last 42 days and not necessarily take place entirely in Nebraska, as it will include self-monitoring after travelers return home, according to the official.

A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official who was also at the briefing said that the risk to the American public remains extremely low and that there is no indication of increased risk to routine travel.

Daniele Hamamdjian and Mo Abbas reported from Tenerife, Mithil Aggarwal from London and Mirna Alsharif from New York City.