Passengers have been disembarked from the cruise ship MV Hondius affected by Hantavirus (AP Photo)
As an outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship sparked international concern, passengers on board the ship were quarantined after arriving in Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday.The MV Hondius arrived in Tenerife on Sunday morning after departing from Cape Verde on May 6, following a deadly outbreak linked to the Andes strain of hantavirus. Three people have already died from the infection, while five passengers who disembarked the ship later tested positive.
Spanish authorities, the World Health Organization (WHO) and cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said none of the more than 140 people on board the ship were showing symptoms when the evacuation operation began.Passengers were transported to shore in small launch boats carrying five to 10 people at a time. According to Spain’s Health Ministry, Spanish citizens were given priority during the evacuation process.Everyone who left the ship had to undergo medical checks before boarding evacuation flights arranged by their respective countries. “The entire operation is going normally,” Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia said.Officials said evacuation flights were expected to continue through Sunday and Monday. More than 20 nationalities are represented among the passengers and crew.WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus traveled to Tenerife to monitor the operation along with Spanish health and interior ministry officials. Those disembarking will be kept separate from the local population, officials said.Hantaviruses are typically spread through contact with the feces, urine, or saliva of rats and are not known to spread easily between humans. However, the Andes variant identified in this outbreak has, in rare cases, shown the ability to spread from person to person. Symptoms may appear anywhere between one and eight weeks after exposure.Spanish travelers are expected to be transferred to a medical facility for quarantine. Oceanwide Expeditions said there were 13 Spanish passengers and one Spanish crew member on board.Meanwhile, the US, Britain and the Netherlands have confirmed evacuation plans for their citizens, while Australia is sending a plane on Monday for citizens of nearby countries including Australia and New Zealand.American travelers will be isolated at a medical center in Nebraska, while British citizens will have to undergo observation in hospital upon arrival. France said its five citizens would be repatriated and observed in hospital for 72 hours before starting a 45-day home quarantine.Norway has also dispatched a special ambulance aircraft equipped to deal with high-risk infectious disease cases.Disembarking passengers have been instructed to leave most of their luggage behind and take only essential items such as documents, phones and chargers.Some crew members along with the body of a passenger who died during the voyage will remain aboard the ship as it heads to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for disinfection procedures. The cruise operator said the journey was expected to take about five days.The outbreak was first reported to the World Health Organization on May 2, when several passengers on a Dutch-flagged cruise ship developed severe respiratory illness during a voyage. Investigators believe the infection may have originated from a passenger who had spent more than three months traveling in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay before boarding the ship on April 1. The passenger later developed symptoms and died on board. WHO said that while existing evidence suggests the virus is likely to have spread through close contact on board the ship, the Andes strain of hantavirus – a rare variant capable of limited human-to-human transmission – has been identified in the confirmed cases.Since then, an international response involving several countries, WHO, and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control has been launched to contain the outbreak. Symptomatic travelers have been medically quarantined, confirmed cases have been isolated and extensive contact tracing has been initiated in many countries. Passengers and crew have been asked to remain in the cabin, monitor themselves for symptoms for 42 days and follow strict infection-control measures. Officials are also conducting genomic sequencing and epidemiological investigations to determine the exact source of exposure and better understand how transmission occurred on the ship.