The first plane carrying passengers evacuated from a hantavirus-hit cruise ship has departed from Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands for Madrid, where they will go to a military hospital......
The first plane carrying passengers evacuated from a hantavirus-hit cruise ship has departed from Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands for Madrid, where they will go to a military hospital.
Spanish nationals on Sunday were the first to leave the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, which remained anchored off Tenerife after arriving hours earlier, and they will be under quarantine after they reach Madrid, Spanish health authorities said. Only Spanish nationals will quarantine in the country.
The cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions listed 13 Spanish passengers and one Spanish crew member on board.
No one else among the more than 140 people left on the Hondius is showing symptoms of the virus, Spain’s Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Oceanwide Expeditions said.
The cruise ship arrived near the Port of Granadilla in Tenerife earlier on Sunday.
Those disembarking and personnel working at the port wore protective gear during the evacuation, including face masks, hazmat suits and respirators.
‘Routine procedure’
Quique Bassat Orellana of the Barcelona Institute of Global Health said, “The principal challenge is reassuring the population and the politicians that this is an extraordinary situation but a routine procedure in terms of guaranteeing the health of individuals who have been in contact with the disease.”
“There is nothing extraordinary except the magnitude of the operation because it involves a large number of individuals from a large number of countries from all over the world,” he told Al Jazeera from Barcelona.
The ship left for Tenerife on Wednesday from the coast of Cape Verde after the WHO and European Union asked Spain to manage the evacuation of its passengers following the detection of the hantavirus outbreak.
The WHO said on Friday that at least eight people on the ship had fallen ill, including three who died – a Dutch couple and a German national. Six of these people are confirmed to have contracted the virus with another two suspected cases, the WHO said.
All passengers on the luxury cruise ship are being considered high-risk contacts as a precautionary measure, Europe’s public health agency said late on Saturday as part of its rapid scientific advice.
A report published by the Spanish Health Ministry before the ship arrived in Tenerife confirmed that it had successfully passed the required health checks before dropping anchor.
“According to information provided by experts who boarded the ship, hygiene and environmental conditions are appropriate and they did not detect any rodents; transmission through contact with rodents on board is therefore unlikely,” the report read.
Just before midday on Sunday, Spanish health officials boarded the ship to conduct a final check and begin evacuating passengers, the Health Ministry said.
After the Spanish nationals, Dutch passengers will be the next group to leave the ship, and their plane will also carry passengers from Germany, Belgium and Greece, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said on Sunday.
Passengers from Turkiye, France, the United Kingdom and the United States will then be evacuated, she added, speaking to the media in the port of Tenerife.
“The last flight for this operation is leaving from Australia. … It is the most complex flight and is scheduled to arrive tomorrow afternoon,” Garcia said on Sunday, adding that this flight will allow the evacuation of six people from Australia, New Zealand and Asian countries.
Thirty crew members will remain on board and will sail to the Netherlands, where the ship will be disinfected.
‘Not another COVID’
Hantavirus is usually spread by rodents, but in rare cases, it can be transmitted person to person.
The WHO estimated there are 10,000 to 100,000 hantavirus infections each year. Argentina remains the country with the highest number of cases in the Americas, the WHO indicated in December, with a case fatality rate of 32 percent, higher than the average observed for other strains of the virus.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived on Saturday evening in Tenerife with Spain’s interior and health ministers and its minister for territorial policy to coordinate the arrival of the ship.
Thanking Tenerife residents for their solidarity, Tedros assured them the risk from the ship was low.
“I need you to hear me clearly,” he wrote in an open letter to the people of Tenerife. “This is not another COVID.”
WHO’s epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director, Maria Van Kerkhove, said that while everybody on board will be classified as “a high-risk contact”, the risk to the general public and the people of the Canaries remained low.
In the city of Granadilla de Abona early on Sunday, life appeared largely normal. Some people were swimming, others shopping at the market or sitting at cafe terraces.
“There are worries there could be a danger, but honestly, I don’t see people being very concerned,” David Parada, a lottery vendor, told the AFP news agency.
The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.
Argentinian provincial health official Juan Petrina said there was an “almost zero chance” the Dutch man linked to the outbreak contracted the disease in Ushuaia based on the virus’s incubation period, among other factors.
Countries such as Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the US, the UK and the Netherlands confirmed on Saturday that they had sent planes to evacuate their nationals from the ship.
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