TENERIFE, Spain (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization sought Saturday to reassure worried residents of the Spanish island of Tenerife that they are not in danger from the anticipated arrival there of a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, issuing a direct message to them.
The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, with more than 140 passengers and crew on board, is headed to Spain’s Canary Islands, off the coast of West Africa, and is expected to arrive at the island of Tenerife in the early hours of Sunday.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, along with Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia and Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, are to head to the island Saturday to coordinate the disembarkation of passengers and some crew.
Some residents on the island have said they do not want the ship to dock there, fearing the transmission of the virus. On board the cruise ship, some of the Spanish passengers have voiced concern about how they will be received once on land.
“I know you are worried. I know that when you hear the word ‘outbreak’ and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest. The pain of 2020 is still real, and I do not dismiss it for a single moment,” Tedros said in a direct message to the people of Tenerife.
“But I need you to hear me clearly: This is not another COVID. The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low. My colleagues and I have said this unequivocally, and I will say it again to you now,” he added.
Three people have died since the outbreak, and five passengers who left the ship are infected with hantavirus, a virus which can cause life-threatening illness.
Hantavirus is usually spread by the inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and isn’t easily transmitted between people. But the Andes virus detected in the cruise ship outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
The WHO, Spanish authorities and cruise company Oceanwide said Saturday that nobody on board the Hondius is currently showing symptoms of the virus.
“WHO continues to actively monitor the situation, coordinate support and next steps and will keep Member States and the public updated accordingly. So far, the risk for the population of Canary Islands and globally remains low,” Tedros posted earlier on X.
Passengers can take only limited belongings and will be isolated
Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said passengers and some crew would disembark in Tenerife under strict health protocols.
Everyone disembarking will first be medically checked to ensure they are not showing any symptoms, while people will only be taken off the ship if a flight is already in Tenerife waiting to fly them off the island, Garcia said during a news conference in Madrid. There are currently people of more than 20 different nationalities on board.
Both the US and the UK have agreed to send planes to evacuate their citizens from the cruise ship.
Those disembarking will not take any luggage with them, Garcia said, and will be allowed to disembark with only a small item of hand luggage containing essential items, a cellphone, charger and documentation.
Some crew, as well as the body of a passenger who died onboard, will not disembark, Garcia said. They will remain on board as the Hondius then sets sail for the Netherlands, where it will undergo disinfection, the minister added.
All Spanish passengers will be transferred to a medical facility and quarantined, she said. Oceanwide has listed 13 Spanish passengers and one Spanish crew member on board.
Spain has activated the EU civil protection mechanism for the evacuation
According to a letter sent by the Dutch foreign and health ministers to parliament late Friday, Spain has activated the EU civil protection mechanism for a medical evacuation plane equipped for high-consequence infectious disease to be on standby.
If anyone falls ill, the medics on board the ship will inform Spanish authorities, and the evacuation plane “will be sent to Tenerife so that the sick person can be quickly transported by air to the European mainland.”
The Dutch government will work with Spanish authorities and the ship company to arrange repatriation of Dutch passengers and crew as soon as possible after arrival in Tenerife, subject to medical conditions and advice from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the letter said.
Those without symptoms will go into home quarantine for six weeks and be monitored by local health services.
As the ship is Dutch-flagged, the Netherlands may also temporarily accommodate people of other nationalities and monitor them in quarantine, it said.
Countries scramble to track passengers who disembarked
Health authorities across four continents were tracking down and monitoring more than two dozen passengers who disembarked before the deadly outbreak was detected. They were also scrambling to trace others who may have come into contact with them.
On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, Dutch officials and the ship’s operator have said.
It wasn’t until May 2 that health authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a passenger.
On Friday, the WHO said a flight attendant on a plane briefly boarded by an infected cruise passenger had tested negative for hantavirus. Her possible infection had raised concerns about the virus’s potential transmissibility.
The KLM flight attendant was working on a plane headed from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on April 25 and had later fallen ill.
The cruise passenger briefly aboard that flight — a Dutch woman whose husband died on the ship — was too ill to stay on the international flight to Europe and was taken off in Johannesburg, where she died.
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