By Joan Faus
May 8 (Reuters) – Spain has agreed to receive a luxury cruise ship carrying 149 people from 23 countries that suffered an outbreak of hantavirus aboard which has killed three people. Four others have been confirmed to be infected and three further suspected cases have been reported.
WHEN WILL THE SHIP ARRIVE IN SPAIN?
The MV Hondius is expected to arrive in Tenerife – part of Spain’s Canary Islands located on the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa – on Sunday around noon (1000 GMT), according to Spanish officials.
The ship is not expected to dock at port but will instead sit at anchor nearby, with people onboard taken to land on smaller boats. Spain’s central government said this was a request from the island’s local authorities, though it stressed there was no indication that docking would have implied a public health risk.
The World Health Organization has said the wider threat to the public from the viral outbreak remains low.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE PEOPLE ONBOARD?
The ship, which began its journey on April 1 in Argentina, is carrying 88 passengers and 61 crew members including a deceased German national, according to cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions. It said on Thursday that none of the remaining passengers currently displayed symptoms of infection.
Once they arrive at the port of Granadilla, in Tenerife’s south, the evacuees will be moved to the island’s main airport about 10 minutes away, Spain’s civil protection and emergencies chief, Virginia Barcones, told state broadcaster TVE on Friday.
They will likely be transferred to the airport on sealed-off buses whose drivers and emergency crew will be clad in protective gear, Barcones said. The buses would take them straight to the airport’s runway, where they would board their respective planes.
It is unclear whether all crew members will leave the MV Hondius. Spain’s state secretary for health, Javier Padilla, told TVE the ship would eventually depart Spanish waters with the “necessary (number of) crew members” aboard.
EVACUATION BY AIR
The Spanish government said it expected to know on Friday which countries would send charter airplanes to Tenerife to evacuate their nationals aboard the ship. The United States and Britain have already confirmed they will send planes, said Barcones, the Spanish official.
For those countries who cannot arrange evacuation flights, there was the possibility of using airplanes from other countries, she said, adding that the coordination would ultimately depend on the European Commission and the Netherlands as the ship’s flag country.
The Philippines, with a total of 38, Britain (23), the U.S. (17), Spain (14) and the Netherlands (13) are the countries with the highest number of people aboard, according to Oceanwide.
LOCAL HOSPITAL ACTIVATED
Although officials plan for everyone evacuated to be quickly flown out of Tenerife, the authorities are nonetheless preparing a special isolated unit at a local hospital as a contingency measure, the local government and unions said.
The Spanish nationals onboard the ship will be transferred by plane to a military hospital in Madrid.
DEAD ON BOARD
Of the three passengers who died after being thought to have contracted the virus, one remains onboard. The Netherlands will handle the evacuation from Tenerife of the deceased German national following maritime and health norms, Barcones said.
WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE SHIP?
The MV Hondius will have to continue its journey to the Netherlands due to its flag obligations, said Padilla, the Spanish health official, without elaborating on when that would occur.
Authorities in the Canaries have said the goal was for the ship to spend the least time possible in the archipelago. Around one million people live in Tenerife.
But Padilla said it still had to be determined whether the ship would be disinfected while anchored off Tenerife. “It will be done in the moment and place considered most adequate. What we can guarantee is that it will be done without any (health) risks,” he said.
(Reporting by Joan Faus, additional reporting by David Latona, Corina Pons and Bart H. MeijerEditing by Aislinn Laing and Nick Zieminski)
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