TENERIFE – The head of the World Health Organization arrived in Spain on Saturday to oversee the evacuation of more than 140 passengers and crew from a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship headed to the Canary Islands.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he would be heading to the Spanish island of Tenerife off the coast of West Africa, along with senior Spanish government officials, “to oversee safe disembarkation of the passengers, crew members and health experts.”
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The Dutch-flagged ship, the MV Hondius, is expected to arrive in Tenerife in the early hours of Sunday. Tedros said that at this point, nobody on board the Hondius was 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,” he posted on X.
Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia said on Friday she would be heading to Tenerife with Tedros and Interior Fernando Grande-Marlaska to coordinate the disembarkation.
Passengers will be isolated
Three people have died since the outbreak, and five passengers who left the ship are infected with hantavirus. Both the U.S. and the U.K. have agreed to send planes to evacuate their citizens from the cruise ship.
The head of Spain’s emergency services, Virginia Barcones, has said passengers will be taken to a “completely isolated, cordoned-off area” once they disembark.
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.
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.
In case anyone falls ill, the medics on board the ship will inform the 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.
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 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’ potential transmissibility.
The flight attendant’s negative result should ease concerns among the public, said Christian Lindmeier, a WHO spokesman. “The risk remains absolutely low,” he said. “This is not a new COVID.”
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 ship passenger, the WHO said.
The KLM flight attendant who tested negative for the virus 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.
The Dutch public health service is undertaking contact tracing on passengers who had contact with the ill woman before she left the plane.
A Briton, Spaniard suspected of being infected
On Friday, U.K. health authorities said a third British national who had been a passenger on the ship is suspected of being infected with hantavirus. The U.K. Health Security Agency said the person is on the island of Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory in the South Atlantic where the ship stopped in April. There was no word on the person's condition.
Spanish health officials said Friday a woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante has symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection and is being tested.
She was a passenger on the same flight as the Dutch woman who died in Johannesburg after traveling on the cruise ship, Secretary of State for Health Javier Padilla told reporters.
Two other Britons who were on the ship have been confirmed to have the virus. One is hospitalized in the Netherlands and the other in South Africa.
Authorities in South Africa are working to trace contacts of any passengers who previously got off the ship. They have focused mainly on an April 25 flight from the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic to Johannesburg, the day after some passengers disembarked on the island.
Some state officials across the U.S. said they were monitoring a small number of residents who were on the ship and already went home, as well as people who may have come into contact with ship passengers. None has symptoms.
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Becatoros contributed from Sparta, Greece. Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.