Spanish authorities are preparing to receive over 140 passengers and crew members from a cruise ship stricken with hantavirus as it heads for the Canary Islands. Health officials have announced that careful evacuations will be conducted upon the vessel's arrival.
The ship, operated by Netherlands-based Oceanwide Expeditions, is expected to reach Tenerife, off the coast of West Africa, on Saturday or Sunday. “They will arrive at a completely isolated, cordoned-off area,” said Virginia Barcones, Spain's head of emergency services, on Thursday. Spain is coordinating with governments whose citizens are on board regarding evacuation plans.
The United States has agreed to send a plane to the Canary Islands to repatriate its 17 citizens from the cruise ship, Barcones stated. The British government also announced it will charter a plane to evacuate the nearly two dozen British citizens still aboard the MV Hondius.
At least three passengers have died, and several others are ill. The World Health Organization has indicated that the risk to the wider public from the outbreak is low. Hantavirus is typically spread by inhaling contaminated rodent droppings and is not easily transmitted between people. Symptoms usually appear between one and eight weeks after exposure. None of the remaining passengers or crew are currently symptomatic, according to the cruise company.
Health authorities across four continents are continuing to track and monitor passengers who disembarked before the outbreak was detected. On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger died, more than two dozen people from at least 12 countries left the ship without contact tracing, the operator and Dutch officials said Thursday. On Friday, UK health authorities reported a suspected third British national with hantavirus.
The UK Health Security Agency said the suspected case is on Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory in the south Atlantic where the ship stopped in April. No further details on their condition were provided. Two other Britons from the ship have confirmed cases: one is hospitalized in the Netherlands, and another in South Africa.
Authorities in South Africa are also tracing contacts of passengers who left the ship, focusing on an April 25 flight from St. Helena to Johannesburg, the day after passengers disembarked there.
