Spanish authorities prepare for arrival of hantavirus-stricken cruise ship

The Spanish authorities are finalising preparations for the arrival of the MV Hondius this weekend, saying an “unprecedented operation” is under way to receive, assess and repatriate the 149 passengers and crew members onboard the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship.

The Dutch-flagged vessel, which was sailing from Argentina to Cape Verde, is due to arrive off the Canary island of Tenerife at around midday on Sunday.

After negotiations between the Spanish government and the archipelago’s regional authorities, the MV Hondius will remain at anchor in the port of Granadilla and will not dock in Tenerife. Passengers will be evaluated onboard and will not have any contact with the local population when they are taken from the ship to be repatriated or, in the case of the 14 Spanish nationals onboard, transported to a military hospital in Madrid for quarantine.

“This is an unprecedented operation in response to an international health alert involving 23 countries,” Spain’s health minister, Mónica García, told Spain’s state radio broadcaster, RNE, on Friday morning.

“We’re coordinating this from Spain and the World Health Organization has entrusted Spain with this operation – which, as I’ve said, is unprecedented. We’re going to do what we have to do, which is work and deliver the necessary health and logistical management.”

García confirmed that non-Spanish citizens who did not need urgent medical attention would be evacuated to their home countries even if they showed symptoms of hantavirus, which has killed three people on the ship.

The ship will remain at anchor in the port of Granadilla (pictured) and will not dock in Tenerife. Photograph: ANP/Shutterstock

“If they show symptoms but don’t need urgent medical attention, they will be evacuated with their respective health workers to their respective countries,” she said.

“The international protocols will be followed – as will all the strict measures when it comes to health prevention. The protocol is based on no one needing urgent medical attention. And we think that won’t be the case because everyone was asymptomatic when they left Cape Verde and they’ve been on the boat for many days now, which makes us think that the risk that they’ve been infected is diminishing each day.”

The WHO said on Friday that the risk the hantavirus strain in question posed to the public was minimal as it spread only through “very close contact”. To date, the organisation has registered five confirmed case and three suspected cases.

“This is a dangerous virus, but only to the person who’s really infected, and the risk to the general population remains absolutely low,” a WHO spokesperson, Christian Lindmeier, told a press briefing in Geneva.

He said that even the people who had stayed in the same cabin as an infected person on the MV Hondius “don’t seem to be both infected in some cases”.

Lindmeier said the disease was “not spreading anything close to how Covid was spreading”. He added that contact tracing was effective “because it traces those who have been in close contact”.

The UK and the US are among the countries that have agreed to send planes to Tenerife to repatriate their citizens. Health authorities across four continents are scrambling to track down and monitor passengers who left the ship before the deadly outbreak was detected. They are also trying to trace others who may have come into contact with them since then.

On 24 April, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died onboard, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, the ship’s operator and Dutch officials said on Thursday. According to the WHO, health authorities did not confirm hantavirus in a passenger on the MV Hondius until 2 May.

The regional president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, speaks to the media as he leaves the Spanish health ministry in Madrid on Thursday. Photograph: Javier Lizón/EPA

The looming arrival of the cruise ship in Tenerife has prompted considerable local unease. Fernando Clavijo, the regional president of the Canary islands, had objected to the ship coming into port at Granadilla and persuaded the central government that it should instead remain at anchor. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper ABC on Friday, he said Spain had been under no legal requirement to take in the ship and that it should have put into port in Cape Verde, which refused it permission to dock.

“We continue to maintain that Spain had no legal obligation to receive that ship and that the operation now being deployed here could have been perfectly organised in Cape Verde,” he said. “We still argue that this could have been resolved earlier, without the need for a three- or four-day voyage.”

Speaking later on Friday, Clavijo said a plan had been devised to minimise the time and contacts that the passengers being evacuated would have while on Tenerife. He added that the foreign nationals would be taken off the ship and put straight into vehicles bound for waiting planes. “We know with certainty that no one will get off the ship if their plane is not already waiting on the runway,” he said.

The town council of Granadilla de Abona, where the port of Granadilla is located, has also taken issue with the central government’s decision.

“Granadilla de Abona is a committed and supportive municipality, ready to collaborate in any health emergency,” it said in a statement. “However … decisions directly affecting their municipality cannot be made unilaterally or without the involvement of the local government. The willingness to collaborate must be accompanied by sound health criteria and proper planning, especially when the safety and wellbeing of our residents are at stake.”

• Agence France-Presse and Associated Press contributed to this report