The occupants of a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak began leaving the vessel in Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday, amid growing international concern about the rare disease.
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 from in April.
Health officials have stressed that the risk for global public health is low and played down comparisons with a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The final flight to evacuate most of the ship’s nearly 150 passengers and crew will leave for Australia on Monday, before the ship continues to the Netherlands, Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said.
Passengers wearing blue medical suits began disembarking from the Dutch-flagged vessel onto smaller boats to reach the port of Granadilla on Tenerife, AFP journalists saw.
The evacuees then boarded a bus for their transfer to Tenerife South airport, where their repatriation flights were due to take off.
“The disembarkation of the passengers and the Spanish crew member has started,” the Spanish health ministry confirmed on Telegram.
The 14 Spaniards on board would leave first, followed by a Dutch flight that would also take citizens from Germany, Belgium, Greece and part of the crew, Garcia said.
Separate flights for Canadian, Turkish, French, British, Irish and US citizens were also planned for Sunday, Garcia added.
International concern
The Atlantic archipelago’s authorities have consistently resisted taking in the ship, which was only authorised to anchor offshore instead of docking in the port.
All passengers were asymptomatic and underwent a final medical assessment before their disembarkation, Garcia told reporters on Tenerife shortly before the operation began.
Spanish authorities have insisted that there will be no contact with the local population in Tenerife.
AFP journalists at Granadilla saw white tents along the quay. Police officers, some in protective medical suits, also sealed off a part of the small industrial port.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is accompanying Spanish officials to oversee the delicate operation.
Regional authorities have warned that it must be completed by Monday, when adverse weather conditions will force the ship to leave.
The only hantavirus type that can be transmitted from person to person – the Andes virus – has been confirmed among those who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.
The WHO said on Friday it had confirmed six out of eight suspected cases. There are no suspected cases remaining on the ship.
The MV Hondius arrived in Tenerife early on Sunday morning from Cape Verde, where three infected people had already been evacuated to Europe earlier this week.
It left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1st for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean.
The WHO believes the first infection occurred before the start of the expedition, followed by transmission between humans aboard the vessel.
But Argentine provincial health official Juan Petrina said this week there was an “almost zero chance” that the Dutch man linked to the outbreak contracted the disease in Ushuaia based on the virus’s weeks-long incubation period, among other factors.
Health authorities in several countries have been tracking passengers who had already disembarked and anyone who may have come into contact with them.
