The tourist cruise ship MV Hondius, operated by Oceanwide Expeditions and flagged in the Netherlands, has already left the coasts of Cape Verde, where it was waiting for three passengers with symptoms of suffering from the Andean variant of hantavirus to be disembarked and assisted.
The forecast is that the ship will reach the Canary archipelago and dock in Tenerife between Saturday, May 9 and Sunday, May 10, with 147 passengers on board, of 23 nationalities, including fourteen Spaniards.
Finally, this past Wednesday the three people on board the cruise ship who presented symptoms were disembarked in Praia, on Santiago Island (Cape Verde), and transferred by medical plane to the Netherlands. One of these planes had to make a stop in Gran Canaria after detecting an electrical failure in the isolation bubble of one of the sick individuals.
According to the Ministry of Health, on Thursday morning a second medicalized plane received the affected patient and the first plane left the island with the crew on board. The three patients are already in the Netherlands. They are a British citizen (56 years old), a Dutch citizen (41), and a German citizen (65), who have been transferred directly to specialized hospitals in Europe.
In the operation, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) of the Netherlands has also worked, as well as different Dutch ministries, the ship operator, and the Government of Spain, among others.
A flight attendant hospitalized in the Netherlands
The authorities of the Netherlands announced on Thursday morning that a Dutch flight attendant had been hospitalized in a medical center in Amsterdam with symptoms compatible with the Andes hantavirus.
The worker had been in contact in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a Dutch passenger, the second deceased from the cruise ship MV Hondius, who died of hantavirus on April 27, when she was repatriating her husband's body.
This Dutch passenger disembarked with symptoms on the island of Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic, along with the corpse of her husband and flew to the South African city of Johannesburg. The woman died in the Emergencies of a hospital in the South African city, after having tried unsuccessfully to take the KML company flight.
"Due to the passenger's health condition at the time, the crew decided not to allow her to board the plane," said the airline KLM. With the flight attendant's case, there are nine suspected cases of hantavirus, with three deaths to date, the last one on May 2nd.
Transfers from Tenerife
This same source has indicated that from Tenerife passengers will be repatriated to their countries of origin, unless their clinical situation does not allow it.
In the case of the fourteen Spaniards traveling on board, they will be evacuated from the Canary island to the Central Defense Hospital Gómez Ulla in Madrid, where they will remain in quarantine.
Upon the arrival of the tourist cruise ship in the Canary Islands, the entire process will be coordinated by a protocol elaborated by the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
Health has indicated that both medical attention and passenger transfers will be carried out "in special spaces and transport" expressly enabled for this situation. In addition, "all contact with the local population" will be avoided and the "safety of healthcare personnel" will be ensured.
Meanwhile, the president of the Canary Islands Government, Fernando Clavijo, has criticized the Government of Spain and has demanded an urgent meeting with Pedro Sánchez. In response, the Minister of Health, Mónica García, highlighted on RTVE that "political noise does not generate confidence" and that she does not understand "how someone you have just called denies the calls the next morning".