Virus-hit cruise ship heads for Spain as evacuees land in Europe

MADRID, Spain (AFP) — A cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak will reach the Spanish island of Tenerife “within three days”, with the evacuation of passengers to start from May 11, Spain said Wednesday.

The fate of the MV Hondius has sparked international alarm after three people travelling on the ship died, though World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted the outbreak was not comparable to the Covid pandemic.

The WHO said emergency crews evacuated three people — two sick crew members and another person who had been in contact with one of the confirmed cases — from the ship Wednesday, which later left its anchorage off Cape Verde and headed for Spain’s Canary Islands.

After being taken from the ship to an ambulance boat by medical personnel in hazmat suits, the three evacuees later boarded flights at the airport in Cape Verde’s capital Praia.

A medical plane carrying two evacuated passengers landed at Amsterdam Airport in the Netherlands at 1747 GMT, according to AFP reporters at the scene.

German emergency services said they had picked up one evacuee in Amsterdam who came into contact with an infected person on board the ship, and were transporting the individual to a hospital in Dusseldorf.

Experts confirmed the version of the virus detected aboard the Hondius was a rare strain known as the Andes virus, the only one that can be transmitted between humans.

The first person to have the virus on the ship could not have been infected during the cruise, given the one- to six-week incubation period, WHO expert Anais Legand told AFP.

The ship left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1, and the first death occurred on April 11.

Argentine officials said the first couple killed had visited Chile, Uruguay and Argentina before the cruise.

They said experts would travel to Ushuaia to test rodents there for hantavirus.

Health officials played down fears of a wider global outbreak from the virus, which is less contagious than Covid.

UN health agency chief Tedros told AFP it was not like the Covid-19 pandemic, adding: “The risk to the rest of the world is low.”

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