A ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak will reach the Spanish island of Tenerife “within three days”, with the evacuation of passengers to start from May 11th, the government said on Wednesday.
The fate of the MV Hondius has sparked international alarm and its impending arrival in the Canary Islands from Cape Verde comes despite opposition from the Atlantic archipelago’s regional government.
Health Minister Monica García told a Madrid news conference that the stricken ship would arrive at Granadilla on Tenerife, where “a joint system for health assessment and evacuation will be put in place to repatriate all passengers, unless their medical condition prevents it”.
Interior ministry sources later said the evacuations would begin from May 11th, with EU nations repatriating their own citizens.
The European Commission would intervene if a country was unable to retrieve its own nationals, while the evacuation of non-EU nations was still being planned, the sources added.
“All the passengers will remain on the cruise ship until the arrival of their planes,” they said.
The 14 Spanish nationals — including one crew member — on board the MV Hondius will be transferred to Madrid’s Gomez Ulla Military Hospital, Garcia told the press conference.
Earlier, the head of the Canary Islands government, Fernando Clavijo, opposed any evacuation of patients onto the archipelago, citing a “total lack of information” from the central government.
But García said she had been in “constant contact” with Clavijo and he would take part in all meetings.
A source close to the Canary Islands presidency earlier told AFP that a medical evacuation flight planned to transfer a doctor from the ship to the archipelago had been cancelled, without giving a reason.
The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, later said three suspected cases, including the doctor, had been evacuated from the vessel off Cape Verde and were en route to the Netherlands for treatment.
The MV Hondius has been at the centre of an international alert since Saturday, when the WHO was informed that three passengers had died and the suspected cause was hantavirus.
The Dutch-flagged ship left Ushuaia in Argentina on April 1 on a voyage through the Atlantic Ocean. There were 88 passengers and 59 crew onboard, including 23 nationalities, the WHO said.
