A complex operation is under way to evacuate passengers — including four Australians — from the rat-virus-stricken cruise ship docked in Spain’s Canary Islands.

Passengers in hazmat suits were being hosed down and airlifted as charter flights arrived from their home countries.

Ninety-four people from 19 nations had been repatriated on Monday morning (AEST). According to reports, they face about 42 days of quarantine.

Spanish passengers were due to leave the MV Hondius first, while countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the US, Britain and the Netherlands sent planes to evacuate their citizens.

Australian passengers would be the last to depart because theirs was “the most complex flight”, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said on Sunday.

That final flight would pick ​up six people from Australia, New Zealand and some unnamed Asian countries.

Thirty crew members will remain on board to sail the Hondius to ​the Netherlands, where it will ⁠be disinfected.

Europe’s public health agency said all passengers from the luxury cruise ‌ship were considered high-risk ⁠contacts as a precautionary measure.

British Army medics parachute onto Tristan da Cunha, where one of the 221 residents has a suspected case of hantavirus. Photo: AAP

Meanwhile, paratroopers have dropped onto the world’s most remote inhabited island, Tristan da Cunha, after confirmation of a case of suspected ‌hantavirus there.

A team of six paratroopers and two military clinicians from 16 Air Assault Brigade ‌jumped from an RAF A400M transport aircraft with oxygen supplies and other medical aid.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence said it was the first time the nation’s military had deployed medical personnel ‌to provide humanitarian ‌support via ⁠a parachute jump.

The ​supplies were primarily destined for a British man who health authorities say was a passenger on the cruise ship that was hit by a hantavirus outbreak. It docked at the island from April 13-15.

The WHO said the man reported symptoms compatible with hantavirus on April 28. He is stable and in isolation.

“With oxygen ‌supplies ​on the island at a critical level, an airdrop with medical personnel was the only method ​of getting vital ‌care to the patient in time,” the Ministry of Defence said.

Tristan da Cunha, home ​to about 200 people, is halfway between South Africa and South America.

It is Britain’s most remote overseas territory, more than 2400 kilometres and a six-day boat ride from ​St ​Helena, its nearest inhabited neighbour.

​It usually relies on a medical team of two ‌people for its health needs, and is normally accessible only by boat as it has no airstrip.

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests were previously delivered by military plane on May 7 to Ascension Island, where another British man from the cruise ship had disembarked before being flown to South Africa.

“The ​arrival of paratroopers, medical personnel and medical supplies from the sky has hopefully reassured the ​people of Tristan da Cunha,” ⁠said Brigadier Ed Cartwright, Officer Commanding 16 Air Assault Brigade.

“The parachuters — I’ve spoken to them — they described it to me as a ‘pretty tasty jump’,” he told Sky News.

“They would have got out of the aircraft, had to turn straight into wind to avoid being pushed past the island and into the Atlantic, and then had a very difficult descent down through the cloud and then on to the drop zone, which was a golf course covered in rocks.”

-with AAP/PA