Cruise affected by hantavirus: WHO chief goes to personally coordinate evacuation of passengers. When will they be able to disembark / “If the operation is not completed, the ship will have to leave”

The Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, will travel to Tenerife on Saturday, in the Spanish Canary archipelago, to coordinate the evacuation of passengers from the cruise ship affected by the hantavirus, sources from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior said on Friday, according to the France Presse agency.

The director of the WHO will accompany the Spanish Ministers of Health and the Interior to a command post located in Tenerife “to ensure coordination between administrations, sanitary control and the application of the expected surveillance and intervention protocols”, said the cited sources.

When will passengers be able to disembark from the MV Hondius in Tenerife

The disembarkation of passengers from the cruise ship MV Hondius, affected by an outbreak of hantavirus, will have to take place between Sunday noon and Monday, this being the “only window” possible for evacuation due to weather conditions, an official from the regional government of the Canary Islands announced on Friday, where the ship is expected to arrive in two days, AFP and Agerpres report.

“The only window we have to complete this operation is between Sunday at noon and until the weather conditions change from Monday,” Alfonso Cabello, deputy minister in the Chancellery of the Regional Government of the Canary Islands, said to the press, evoking “wind and blasphemy” for Monday.

The MV Hondius will not be authorized to dock in the local port and will drop anchor in the waters off the island of Tenerife, with the passengers then transferred to the port by a smaller vessel.

From there, they will be driven by bus to Tenerife South Airport.

“If the operation is not completed by Monday, then the ship will have to continue its course. Because the navigation conditions will change a lot in the vicinity of the port,” added Alfonso Cabello.

“The ship will have to leave,” he insisted, warning that, beyond that deadline, “no further operation will be possible before the end of May, when ideal weather conditions will return.”

Also, the official from the Canary Islands specified that the ship is expected to arrive on Sunday morning, at dawn, between 03:00 and 05:00 local time (01:00 – 03:00 GMT), thus confirming an information disseminated by the Spanish Emergency Services, which had announced that, if the vessel maintains its current speed, it will arrive in the area faster than the scheduled time.

It will also be important that the repatriation planes “are already on the ground from Saturday night to Sunday or during Sunday morning”, insisted Alfonso Cabello, in the context in which these evacuations from Tenerife South Airport are managed by the countries of origin of the passengers on the cruise ship.

The US is organizing a flight to repatriate American passengers

The United States announced on Friday that it is preparing an evacuation flight for American passengers who are on the cruise ship MV Hondius, affected by an outbreak of hantavirus and which is on its way to the Canary Islands, reports AFP.

“The State Department is organizing a repatriation flight to facilitate the safe return of American passengers on board,” a spokesman said. “We are in direct communication with the Americans on board and are prepared to provide consular assistance after the ship's arrival in Tenerife,” he added.

There are 17 Americans on the list of passengers on board the ship.

Hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship carrying passengers from around the world

The hantavirus outbreak was identified on the Dutch ship MV Hondius, which carries around 150 passengers from 28 countries. The luxury cruise, operated by Oceanwide Expeditions, started on April 1 in Ushuaia, Argentina, and is scheduled to arrive on May 10 in the Canary Islands, Spain.

On Thursday, the WHO announced that, in total, five of the eight suspected hantavirus cases have been confirmed. Three people have died, including a 69-year-old Dutch woman who was infected with the virus.

Her Dutch husband and a woman from Germany also died and their cases are under investigation.

“It's not the beginning of a pandemic”

It is still unclear how the outbreak started.

Hantavirus is usually transmitted by rodents, with humans becoming infected by inhaling air contaminated with viral particles from rodent urine, excrement or saliva. But in the most recent outbreak, human-to-human transmission was documented for the first time, WHO said.

The cruise visited remote wilderness areas, so a passenger could have come into contact with the virus then or before boarding the ship.

Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist specializing in infectious diseases at the World Health Organization (WHO), said in a press conference on Thursday that the situation is not comparable to the one six years ago, caused by COVID, because the hantavirus is transmitted through “close and intimate contact”.

“It's not COVID, it's not the flu, it spreads very, very differently,” Van Kerkhove said.

She specified that the authorities asked “everyone to wear a mask” on board the MV Hondius.

People who come into contact with or care for suspected cases should, she added, “wear a higher level of personal protective equipment.”

At the same conference, WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus said his organization “assesses the risk to public health as low”.

Human-to-human transmission is possible, but the risk of global infection remains low, according to the WHO chief.

He said the first two people with the confirmed virus “had traveled through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on a birding trip that included visits to areas where the rat species known to carry the virus was present.”

Considering the incubation period of the disease – which can reach up to six weeks – it is possible that other cases will be reported, the head of the WHO also said.

Experts have noted that the Andes strain has spread between people in previous outbreaks through very close contact, and health experts believe that some of the infections aboard the MV Hondius may have been transmitted between people.

Also on Thursday, the cruise operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, announced that 29 passengers – including the body of one of the deceased – were disembarked on the British island of Saint Helena on April 24.