Spain will receive in Tenerife the cruise ship affected by the hantavirus outbreak to evacuate passengers
The Spanish authorities had announced that they would accept the request of the World Health Organization that the ship head to the Canary Islands
The cruise MV Hondius, affected by a hantavirus outbreak, will dock next Saturday in the port of Granadilla de Abona on the Atlantic island Spanish Tenerife, from where the passengers will be evacuated to the respective countries of origin, the Spanish Government reported this Wednesday.
In the case of the fourteen Spaniards, including a crew member, they will be taken to a military hospital Gómez Ulla in Madrid, after being examined in the Canary Islands archipelago, indicated the Minister of Health, Mónica García.
This health center has “high level isolation units”, where they will keep “quarantine”, the minister specified in a round of press with the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, after a meeting chaired by the Chief of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez.
García explained that all passengers today are asymptomatic, once the three cases with symptoms and the doctor The cruise ship, also ill, are already off the vessel and were evacuated from Cape Verde, where the ship is still anchored.
The Spanish authorities had announced last night that they accepted the request of the World Health Organization(WHO) that the vessel s e directed to the Canary Islands, as the request of the Dutch Government that the doctor be evacuated to the Canary archipelago in an ambulance plane.
However, it was finally decided that he would travel to the Netherlands upon experiencing improvement.
A laboratory that collaborates with the World Health Organization(WHO) confirmed today that the deaths of three people from the cruise, that was sailing through the Atlantic Ocean, it was due to the Andes strain of hantavirus, the only one that has been documented transmission among humans.
The identification was possible thanks to a sample taken by a PCR test from a person who had been onboard the b uque affected, indicated a statement from the Center for Emerging Viral Diseases of the Geneva University Hospitals(HUG).
The luxury cruise departed from Argentina; in early April, a Dutch passenger presented symptoms and died on the 11th.
His wife disembarked with symptoms on the island of Saint Elena, in the mid-Atlantic, and took a flight to Johannesburg (South Africa), where died in the emergency services of a hospital.
A second woman, of German nationality, died on 2 May, four days after starting to show signs of pneumonia. EFE