GENEVA/MADRID—A luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak and marooned since Sunday off the coast of Cape Verde left for Spain on Wednesday, a Reuters witness said, after three people, two of them seriously ill, were evacuated.
The MV Hondius, with nearly 150 people on board, is expected to dock in Spain’s Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, within three days, Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia said, adding that those still on board were not presenting any symptoms of the disease.
Once in Tenerife, if they are still healthy, all non-Spanish citizens will be repatriated to their countries, Garcia told a press conference in Madrid.
The 14 Spanish passengers will be quarantined in a military hospital in Madrid, she said. The duration of the quarantine will depend on when they potentially had contact with the virus, she said, adding that it has a 45-day incubation period.
Three people—a Dutch couple and a German national—have died in the outbreak.
A total of eight people—including a Swiss citizen who has returned home and is being treated in Zurich—are suspected to have contracted the virus, with three of them confirmed by laboratory testing, the World Health Organisation said.
Argentina’s health ministry will carry out rodent trapping and analysis in the southern city of Ushuaia, the origin point of the cruise ship hit by the outbreak, it said in a statement.
Officials are reconstructing the itinerary of the Dutch citizens who travelled in Argentina and Chile and later presented symptoms of hantavirus on the cruise, the statement said.
Evacuations
South Africa confirmed it had identified among the victims the Andean strain of the virus that can – in rare cases – spread among humans through very close contact. Argentina’s health ministry said it would send Andes virus RNA and guidelines for diagnosis and treatment to laboratories in Spain, Senegal, South Africa, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.“This is the only (hantavirus) strain that is known to cause human-to-human transmission, but such transmission is very rare and … only happens due to very close contact,” South Africa’s health ministry said.
Nevertheless, some Tenerife residents said they were worried about the ship docking there. “People are scared,” said Margarita Maria, 62, adding that the boat should go elsewhere in Spain.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X that the three people evacuated from the ship on Wednesday were on their way to the Netherlands.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry said these people included a Dutch person, a German and a Briton and that they would be transported to specialised hospitals in Europe.
One of the aircraft transporting two patients from Cape Verde to Amsterdam was due to stop in Morocco to refuel, but Morocco refused to allow the aircraft to land, and the plane was instead refuelling at the airport in Gran Canaria, Spain’s health ministry said.
While in Gran Canaria, the on-board doctor reported a problem with the patient’s life support system, and the patient is now connected to the airport’s electrical supply, awaiting the arrival of a new aircraft to continue the journey, the ministry said.
Two of those evacuated presented acute symptoms, the ship’s operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, said. The third person was closely linked to the German passenger who died on the ship on May 2. The Dutch ministry said that person was possibly infected with the virus.
The ship set off from the southern tip of Argentina on April 1 and travelled to some of the most remote places on earth, including the British island of Saint Helena.
The Dutch government said in a letter to parliament that around 40 people disembarked at Saint Helena, including the Swiss national who has since developed symptoms.
‘Very, Very Different to COVID’
Since the start of the outbreak, the WHO has said the risk to the wider public from a virus usually transmitted by rodents is low and it stressed on Wednesday that this remained the case.“So when we say close contact (for human-to-human transmission), we mean very close physical contact, whether it’s sharing a bunk room or sharing a cabin, providing medical care, for example, (that is) very, very different to COVID and very different to influenza,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director of epidemic and pandemic management, told Reuters.
Van Kerkhove said the WHO was working with countries to follow up with passengers who left the boat at Saint Helena in the south Atlantic, before it reached Cape Verde.
‘Our Days Have Been Close to Normal’
Passenger Kasem Hato told Reuters the ship’s captain was keeping passengers updated and that those on board had been advised to limit close contact with other passengers and use hand sanitizer regularly.“People are taking the situation seriously but without any panic, trying to keep social distancing and wearing masks to be safe,” he said.
“Our days have been close to normal, just waiting for authorities to find a solution, but morale on the ship is high and we’re keeping ourselves busy with reading, watching movies, having hot drinks, and that kind of things.”