Occupants of a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak that has sparked international alarm began flying home from Spain’s Canary Islands yesterday in a complex repatriation operation.
Three passengers from the MV Hondius — a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman — have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.
No vaccines or specific treatments exist for hantavirus, which is endemic in Argentina, where the ship departed.
Photo: AFP
However, health officials have stressed that the risk for global public health is low and played down comparisons to a repeat of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The final flight to evacuate most of the ship’s nearly 150 passengers and crew would leave for Australia today, before the ship continues to the Netherlands, Spanish Minister of Health Monica Garcia said.
Passengers wearing blue medical suits began disembarking the Dutch-flagged vessel onto smaller boats to reach the port of Granadilla on Tenerife.
The evacuees then boarded a red Spanish army bus and traveled to Tenerife South Airport in a convoy with Spanish Civil Guard vehicles. A protective board separated the driver from the passengers.
The evacuees changed into new protective equipment before boarding their repatriation flight, the first of which left carrying 14 Spaniards who would observe quarantine at a military hospital in Madrid.
“The operation is going very well,” WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at the port.
A Dutch flight that would also take citizens from Germany, Belgium, Greece and part of the crew would follow the Spanish departure, Garcia said.
Separate flights for Canadian, Turkish, French, British, Irish and US citizens were also planned for yesterday.
Regional authorities have warned that the operation must be completed by today, when adverse weather conditions would force the ship to leave.
Canary Islands regional authorities have consistently resisted taking in the ship, which was only authorized to anchor offshore instead of docking in the port.
However, all passengers are asymptomatic and underwent a final medical assessment before their disembarkation, Garcia told reporters on Tenerife shortly before the operation began.
Spanish authorities have insisted there would be no contact with the local population in Tenerife.
White tents were erected along the quay, and the police, some in protective medical suits, had sealed off part of the small industrial port.
Spain “is doing what it must do, with technical and scientific rigor and full transparency, with institutional loyalty and with international cooperation,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said yesterday.
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