The evacuation of the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius cruise ship must be completed within 24 hours of the vessel reaching Tenerife on Sunday or face days or even weeks of delay because of bad weather, authorities in the Canary Islands warned on Friday.
The Dutch-flagged vessel, which was sailing from Argentina to Cape Verde, is due to arrive in the Spanish archipelago this weekend, triggering what Spain’s health minister has termed an “unprecedented operation” to receive, assess and repatriate the 149 passengers and crew members onboard.
But the operation now faces the additional complication of changing weather.
“The only window of opportunity we have to carry out this operation is around 12 o’clock on Sunday morning and until conditions change from Monday,” Alfonso Cabello, a regional government spokesperson, told reporters on Friday.
RM Block
“Otherwise, the ship must leave and no operation could be carried out again in theory … until the end of May,” he said, citing wind and swell.
The Hondius is estimated to arrive at the port of Granadilla, Tenerife, in the early hours of Sunday. After negotiations between the Spanish government and the archipelago’s regional authorities, it will not dock but will instead remain at anchor in the south-eastern port of Granadilla.
Passengers will be evaluated on the ship and will not have any contact with the local population when they are taken from the ship to be repatriated or, in the case of the 14 Spanish nationals onboard, transported to a military hospital in Madrid for compulsory quarantine.
Late on Friday night, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said as of May 8th that six cases of the virus has been confirmed, while two others were probable. All six laboratory-confirmed cases were identified as the Andes strains.
Elsewhere, a Danish person tested negative for the virus, Denmark’s SSI public health authority said in a statement.
The Danish person flew from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on a plane on which an infected person also travelled, the authority said
Spanish health minister Mónica García confirmed that non-Spanish citizens who did not need urgent medical attention would be evacuated to their home countries even if they showed symptoms of hantavirus.
“The international protocols will be followed – as will all the strict measures when it comes to health prevention,” she said.
Two new suspected cases of the virus were reported earlier on Friday, one in Spain and the other on the remote south Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, as experts race to contain an outbreak that began on a luxury cruise ship.
The announcements in locations thousands of kilometres apart will fuel concern about a cluster of cases so far associated with three deaths – though the WHO has repeatedly said the risk to the wider public is low and the virus does not transmit easily.
A 32-year-old woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante has symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection and is being tested, Spanish health authorities said.
She was briefly sitting on a plane behind a Dutch woman who had contracted the virus on the MV Hondius, secretary of state for health Javier Padilla told reporters.
That Dutch woman left the flight in Johannesburg feeling ill before it took off on April 25th and later died in hospital.
A British man was also suspected of having the disease on Tristan da Cunha, the UK health security agency said. Officials there said he was a passenger on the ship which made a stop on the island on April 13th to 15th.
“Based on the dynamics of this outbreak, based on how it is spreading and not spreading amongst the people on the ship, the people who have disembarked, as well, we continue to consider the risk as low for the general population,” Anais Legand, WHO technical officer for viral threats, said in an online briefing.
Both new suspected cases have links to the original cluster of cases, officials said.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee confirmed that the two Irish people on board the ship hit by are “safe and well”.
“It’s important to acknowledge that a number of people have passed away and this is a very difficult situation for their families and those on board,” she told reporters while attending the North South Ministerial Council meeting in Armagh city on Friday.
McEntee’s embassy team has been “engaging directly” with the two passengers and also with the Health Service Executive HSE to see what measures “would need to be taken when they do get home”.
“But obviously the priority is to make sure that they can get home as quickly as possible, and we’re working with them and engaging with them on that.”
The cruise left Argentina in March with around 150 passengers and stopped in the Antarctic and other locations before heading north to waters off Cape Verde west of Africa where it has briefly held this week after news of the cases emerged.
WHO officials have confirmed that some of the cases on the ship are caused by the Andes strain of hantavirus, the only version that can spread between people, usually through prolonged and close contact with a person who is showing symptoms.
Three people – a Dutch couple and a German national – have died following the outbreak – the first of its kind on a ship.
Four others confirmed to be infected, two Britons, a Dutch and a Swiss national, are being treated in hospitals in the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland, and a fifth case is suspected, according to the WHO.
Those WHO figures do not include the suspected cases on Tristan da Cunha or in Spain.
Cruise operator Oceanwide on Thursday said there were no people with symptoms of a possible infection remaining on board the ship, which was expected to dock in Tenerife early on Sunday.
[ Hantavirus: Is there a risk to the public? And the simple way to avoid infectionOpens in new window ]
The cruise ship stopped at Tristan da Cunha between April 13th and 15th, with passengers disembarking to go on nature tours and visit the local shop and pub, online footage of the tour showed.
The UK health security agency did not go into further detail on the British passenger with suspected symptoms.
Tristan da Cunha, home to only around 200 people, is halfway between South Africa and South America and the world’s remotest inhabited island, more than 2,400km and a six-day boat ride from St Helena, its nearest inhabited neighbour.
The Spanish woman has “mild respiratory symptoms” and had been to a hospital where she will be tested for the virus, with results expected 24 to 48 hours later, according to a statement on the regional health department’s website.
Padilla said the woman was sitting two rows behind the cruise ship passenger, but the contact between them “was brief” since the passenger had only been “on board for a short time”.
Padilla added that Valencia’s regional health authorities were tracing the people the woman has been in contact with over the past few days. – Additional reporting: The Guardian/Reuters
