Spain has started evacuating passengers from a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship anchored near Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
Health Minister Mónica García said the operation was ‘proceeding normally’ and that all passengers on board the MS Hondius were still asymptomatic.
With a long camera lens, passengers could be seen wandering around on the deck of the ship, or at the windows, all in white medical face masks, as the first evacuation took place.
The ship’s passengers are being divided into groups by nationality to be ferried to shore. They will be taken by bus to the local airport, where charter planes will repatriate them to their home countries.
Fourteen Spanish nationals were the first to disembark, then those flown out by the Netherlands, including Dutch, Greek and German passengers, and part of the crew.
Other flights departed after that, including to the UK and US. The last evacuation flight is expected to leave today to Australia.
The Hondius pulled into the port of Granadilla before dawn on Sunday, a month after the first passenger died on board.
There have been meticulous preparations to receive the ship, which won’t be permitted to reach shore: a security perimeter of one nautical mile was enforced around it as it approached the island.
Dozens of intensive care specialists are on stand-by at the Candelaria hospital in Tenerife in case anyone from the Hondius becomes seriously ill during the transfer. A strict isolation facility has one bed fully equipped to deal with infectious diseases, complete with testing kit and a ventilator.
“We are absolutely ready,” chief intensive care doctor Mar Martin said.
“We’ve never seen hantavirus before – but it’s a virus, with some complications, just like we manage every day. We are fully trained for that.”
Spanish nationals leaving the ship will be flown to Madrid, where they face a mandatory quarantine in the Gomez Ulla military hospital. Complete isolation would be grueling – the virus has an incubation period of up to nine weeks – and it is not clear how long people in Spain or elsewhere will be quarantined.
The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, now in Tenerife to oversee the disembarking, has praised the authorities for their “solid and effective response” to this outbreak. –BBC
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