MV Hondius Arrives In Tenerife As WHO Oversees Hantavirus Evacuation After Three Deaths

A hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, the MV Hondius, with more than 140 people on board, arrived at Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands, where passengers and some crew were to disembark under WHO and Spanish authorities’ supervision.

“The WHO chief told the people of Tenerife Saturday that the risk to them from an arriving cruise ship hit with a deadly hantavirus outbreak was "low"”

Gulf News

The World Health Organization, Spanish authorities and cruise company Oceanwide Expeditions said that nobody on board the MV Hondius is currently showing symptoms of the virus, while the outbreak had already killed three people and five passengers who left the ship were infected with hantavirus.

Gulf News

The ship would not dock and would remain at anchor, with people ferried off in small boats, and everyone disembarking would be checked for symptoms before evacuation flights were ready.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was to supervise the evacuation, and the director of the WHO’s Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Management, Maria Van Kerkhove, said authorities were aiming to complete evacuation flights on Sunday and Monday.

The Associated Press report said the ship had travelled from Cape Verde, where three people were evacuated due to illness, and that some crew and the body of a passenger who died would remain on the ship for disinfection before it sailed on to the Netherlands.

As residents and dock workers in Tenerife voiced concerns about the imminent arrival, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged calm in an open letter, writing, "I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another Covid."

Tedros also insisted, "The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low," while saying the Andes strain of hantavirus had been confirmed among those who tested positive.

Mint

NBC News reported that protests continued Friday with residents chanting, “Yes to tourism, no to the virus,” after the Spanish government overruled local leaders to grant permission for the ship to anchor offshore Sunday.

NBC News said Spanish Health Minister Mónica Garcia told reporters that "everything is ready" for the arrival, and that all passengers would wear FFP2 masks.

NBC News further reported that Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said health screenings aboard the ship continued and that anyone showing symptoms would be taken to the Netherlands for treatment, while passengers and crew members without symptoms would be flown home.

The WHO described a disembarkation plan that would move passengers and crew to the industrial port of Granadilla, far from residential areas, in sealed, guarded vehicles, through a completely cordoned-off corridor, and then repatriate them directly to their home countries.

“TENERIFE, Spain — The head of the World Health Organization on Saturday made an appeal to locals in Tenerife to remain calm as the Spanish island prepared to receive passengers from a hantavirus-hit cruise ship that has left three people dead and sparked growing local outrage”

NBC News

Tedros told residents, "You will not encounter them. Your families will not encounter them," and NBC News said most passengers and crew would be ferried ashore at Granadilla in small boats and taken directly to repatriation flights in sealed, guarded vehicles.

NBC News reported that thirty crew members would stay aboard the ship and sail to the Netherlands for the disinfection process, along with the body of one of the passengers who died.

For the United States, NBC News said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deployed a team to Tenerife to meet the 17 Americans due to disembark, who would be flown to a specialist quarantine facility in Nebraska previously used to house patients in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In an interview on CNN’s 'State of the Union', Indian-origin scientist Jay Bhattacharya urged Americans not to panic, saying, “The key message I want to send to your audience is that this is not COVID.”