The passengers of the MV Hondius, in the grip of a deadly virus outbreak, are putting on movies, sanitizing their hands repeatedly and awaiting their next socially distanced meal as their ship sails the Atlantic.

The nearly 150 people on board were practicing the kind of rigorous hygiene familiar from the coronavirus pandemic, while the crew frequently cleans hand rails and other high-contact surfaces.

They were hunkered down on board as officials in Spain on Wednesday laid out a contentious plan to receive the ship in the Canary Islands this week, over the objections of local leaders.

Mónica García, the Spanish health minister, said during a news conference on Wednesday that the Hondius would sail in the coming days from near the West African nation of Cape Verde to a port in Tenerife, one of Spain’s Canary Islands. From there, she said, passengers would be able to return home if they are medically fit to travel.

Fernando Clavijo, who leads the regional government of the Canary Islands, objected to the ship docking there, though his government could do little to prevent it.

“There is no information that justifies why the vessel must sail for three days to the Canary Islands,” Mr. Clavijo said in a radio interview.

Spain’s central government, which has authority over its ports and the handling of potential infections from overseas, was clear that the ship was coming. “We are not going to get into the political controversy, I believe it’s not the time,” Ms. García said during the news conference, in response to Mr. Clavijo’s comments.

Since April 11, three passengers who were aboard the Hondius have died and five other people have been sickened after showing symptoms of the hantavirus, a rare family of viruses carried by rodents, according to the World Health Organization. On Wednesday morning, three people aboard the ship — two with “acute” symptoms of the disease — were evacuated on two medical flights to the Netherlands, according to the Dutch foreign ministry.

The evacuees included the ship’s doctor, a 56-year-old Briton, and a 41-year-old Dutch citizen who also worked on the ship, according to Spanish officials and Oceanwide, the Dutch company operating the cruise. The third evacuee was a 65-year-old German passenger who had been in close contact with one of the people who died.

The UK Health Security Agency said two people who were on board the ship and had returned to Britain on their own are self isolating, according to a statement from the agency. Neither person is reporting symptoms, the agency said.

“At this stage, the overall public health risk remains low,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the W.H.O., said on social media.

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa said that all three confirmed cases involved the Andes virus, a type of hantavirus that is primarily found in South America and is the only type known to spread between people. But the variant does not spread between people incidentally, and requires close, sustained contact, as might occur aboard a cruise ship.

South Africa’s health minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, said on Wednesday that the authorities in his country had identified 62 people — including medical and airport workers — who had contact with ill passengers from the ship.

So far, health officials have tracked down 42 people though contact-tracing, all of whom are currently under observation, but had not been placed in isolation. They are still working to reach the remaining 20.

The MV Hondius departed from Argentina in early April with about 150 passengers and crew members. Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island, Nightingale Island, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena and Ascension were among the planned stops on its route.

After the outbreak began, the ship headed to Cape Verde, where officials did not allow passengers to disembark.

Those on board were doing their best to keep busy, some watching movies in their cabins, according to accounts from passengers in interviews and social media posts.

Passengers are encouraged to practice social distancing and wear masks. For meals, they are told to sit in every other chair in the dining room. Hand sanitizer dispensers have been placed around the ship.

“Our days have been close to normal, just waiting for authorities to find a solution,” Kasem Hato, a Jordanian travel influencer who posts online as Ibn Hatutta, said in an email. “But morale on the ship is high and we’re keeping ourselves busy with reading, watching movies, having hot drinks and that kind of things.”

The first fatality on the ship was a 70-year-old Dutch man who died while aboard on April 11. The man’s 69-year-old wife became ill and died on April 26 in Johannesburg while attempting to fly home to the Netherlands. The third fatality was a German passenger who died on May 2.

So far the virus has been confirmed in three of the cases: the 69-year-old woman, another passenger who was taken to a hospital in South Africa, and a man who had disembarked the cruise and was receiving care in a hospital in Zurich.

The Argentine government is investigating the possibility that the infection originated in the Dutch couple said Federico Lada, a spokesman from the Argentine health ministry, on Wednesday.

They arrived in Argentina last year in November and spent more than a month in the country, spending months making a series of border crossings between Argentina and Chile, according to a statement from the Argentine health ministry.

After crossing from Argentina into Uruguay in March, they returned to Argentina on March 27. On April 1, the couple left Argentina, the health ministry said.

Investigators will travel to areas the couple visited to capture and analyze rodents, the health ministry said.

Mr. Lada also said that the investigators will examine the possibility described by The Associated Press that the couple contracted the virus during a bird-watching outing at a garbage dump in the Argentine city of Ushuaia. He confirmed that the couple visited the location.

Yvette Cooper, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, said in a statement on Wednesday that her office was in contact with British national aboard the ship and was working to get them “safely home with proper protection for public health.”

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines said on Wednesday that the Dutch woman who died from the virus boarded a flight to Amsterdam in Johannesburg on April 25, but, “due to the passenger’s medical condition at the time, the crew decided not to allow the passenger to travel on the flight.” Local health officials in the Netherlands have alerted passengers from the flight as a precaution, the airline said.

Carlos Barragán, Keith Bradsher, Emma Bubola, Max Kim and Zimasa Matiwane contributed reporting.