The Government of Spain, in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) and with representatives from 23 countries, began in the early hours of last Sunday an unprecedented operation to evacuate the Dutch-flagged tourist cruise ship affected by an Andean hantavirus outbreak, which has been anchored off the coast of Tenerife for more than 24 hours.
According to the data offered by the Government of Spain, 94 people had already been disembarked from the MV Hondius, operated by Oceanwide Expeditions, and transferred on planes expressly arranged for that operation. According to the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, all disembarkations would conclude on Monday afternoon.
The last 24 travelers will leave this Monday on a flight from Australia and another broom flight from the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the ship will leave for Europe with 34 crew members, where it will be disinfected.
On the tourist cruise traveled about 150 people, including passengers, crew, and epidemiologists from the Netherlands, the WHO, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
The Spanish, the first to disembark
The first to disembark were the fourteen Spanish citizens, all asymptomatic, who were transferred to the Torrejón de Ardoz Air Base, in Madrid, and from there to the Gómez Ulla Hospital, where they will carry out the quarantine and health monitoring.
The Minister of Health, Mónica García, indicated that the Spaniards were evacuated in reduced groups, in bubble buses of the Unidad Militar de Emergencia, after going through disinfection processes and dressed with individual protection equipment. The Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, has added in statements to RTVE that the quarantine for the Spaniards will be 42 days, of which seven will be strictly, and that it will start counting from May 6.
For his part, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted from the Port of Tenerife that this virus has a low risk for the population, based on how the virus behaves and that it is a disease known for years in the countries of the Southern Cone.
A "mild" positive from the US and another positive in France
The last passengers to leave the MV Hondius on the afternoon of this past Sunday were the seventeen American tourists. In total, aboard the tourist cruise there were a total of seventeen citizens from the United States, who were transferred by plane from Tenerife.
Two of these passengers were transferred in biocontainment units out of "excessive caution," the U.S. Executive's Department of Health and Human Services stated early this morning. Furthermore, it indicated that one of the passengers presented mild symptoms of hantavirus and registered another "mild positive" on the PCR test for the Andean virus.
The passengers have been transferred to the Nebraska Regional Center for the Treatment of Emerging Special Pathogens, while the one presenting mild symptoms will be transferred to a second center with similar characteristics.
The Spanish Secretary of State for Foreign Health, Javier Padilla, has clarified this Monday on RTVE that the passenger who tested "mild" positive when undergoing tests on the cruise ship resulted in "inconclusive" and in a second test yielded a "negative". However, he added that all passengers disembarked from the MV Hondius were treated as possible positives in the evacuation protocol as a precaution.
Twenty-two close contacts in France for two flights
Meanwhile, in France, a positive case of the Andean virus has been detected in one of the five repatriated passengers this Sunday, who began to show symptoms on the return journey between Tenerife and the European country. As the French Minister of Health, Stéphanie Rist, stated on Radio France, this citizen is being treated in a hospital specializing in infectious diseases. Meanwhile, the rest of the repatriated French citizens will be hospitalized for at least fifteen days and will undergo further tests.
In addition, the French health official has also reported that twenty-two cases have been identified of possible contacts in the country of travelers who coincided with the 69-year-old Dutch woman who died with hantavirus after flying from the island of Santa Elena to Johannesburg, in South Africa, and who unsuccessfully tried to take a flight from this same city to Amsterdam.
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