Evacuation flights have begun for passengers and crew from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship that docked in Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday.
The first group, all Spanish nationals, have been evacuated and are now on their way to Madrid, where they will be going into quarantine. All passengers on board the plane are asymptomatic.
Instead, one of the five French nationals evacuated back to France on Sunday is now showing symptoms of the disease, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said. He added that he would soon issue a decree for appropriate isolation measures. As a result, these five passengers were immediately placed in strict isolation until further notice, the minister adds.
More than 90 of nearly 150 passengers were expected to be evacuated from the Canary Islands by Sunday evening, Spanish authorities said. The operation is planned to last until Monday.
Disembarkation was carried out in groups of five people and only when the relevant aircraft, depending on the group’s nationality, was ready to depart from Tenerife South International Airport.
The Spanish government has said the operation will be carried out in an isolated manner without “any contact or risk to the local population.”
The ship will then continue on its way to the Netherlands.
Three passengers from the ship – 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.
Four people are under surveillance in Italy after briefly boarding a flight with one of the victims. The county’s health ministry says the risk to the public is “very low.”
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The only hantavirus type that can transmit from person to person – the Andes virus – has been confirmed among those who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.
“We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact,” WHO’s epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director Maria Van Kerkhove said Saturday.
But the risk to the general public and the people of the Canaries remained low, she added.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who arrived in Spain on Saturday and is expected to oversee the ship evacuation, gave the same assurance and thanked the people of Tenerife for their solidarity.
“I need you to hear me clearly,” Tedros wrote in an open letter to the people of Tenerife on Saturday: “This is not another Covid.”
After arriving in Tenerife, he said he was confident the operation would be a success. “Spain is ready and prepared,” he told reporters.
The WHO said Friday it had confirmed six cases out of eight suspected ones. There are no suspected cases remaining on the ship.
The MV Hondius is sailing from Cape Verde, where three infected people had already been evacuated earlier in the week.
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