Canary Islands brace for arrival of hantavirus-hit cruise ship
GRANADILLA DE ABONA, Spain (AFP) — Speaking to reporters in Madrid, Spain’s health and interior ministers insisted there would be “no contact” with the local population.
Interior Minister Fernando Grande‑Marlaska said the operation would be swift, with passengers leaving “by nationality groups”.
After being examined on board, they will be taken on smaller boats and transferred by bus to the airport. There, they will be flown back to their home countries, including to the United States, Britain, and France.
“All areas (the passengers) pass through will be sealed off,” the interior minister said, adding a maritime exclusion zone would be in force around the vessel.
The 14 Spanish nationals on the ship will be evacuated first, Garcia Gomez added.
The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.
Provincial health official Juan Petrina said there was an “almost zero chance” the Dutch man linked to the outbreak contracted the disease in Ushuaia based on the virus’s 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.
A flight attendant on the Dutch airline KLM, who came into contact with an infected passenger from the cruise ship and later showed mild symptoms, tested negative for hantavirus, the WHO said Friday.
The passenger — the wife of the first person to die in the outbreak — had briefly been on a plane bound from Johannesburg to the Netherlands on April 25, but was removed before take-off.
She died the following day in a Johannesburg hospital.
Spanish authorities said a woman on that flight was being tested for hantavirus, having developed symptoms at home in eastern Spain. She is in isolation in hospital, said health secretary Javier Padilla.
“This is a pretty unlikely case,” he told reporters, saying she had been two rows behind the woman who died.
Two Singapore residents who had been on the ship tested negative for the disease but would remain in quarantine, the city state’s authorities said Friday.
British health authorities also said Friday there was a suspected case on Tristan da Cunha, one of the world’s most isolated settlements with around 220 people.
