The fate of the MV Hondius caused international concern, after three people traveling on the ship died. (Photo: AFP)
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), says the hantavirus is not like the covid-19 pandemic and believes “the risk to the rest of the world is low”.
The passenger ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak will meanwhile reach the Spanish island of Tenerife “within three days”, with the evacuation of passengers to begin from May 11, Spain said.
The fate of the MV Hondius caused international concern, after three people traveling on the ship died.
The WHO said emergency teams on Wednesday evacuated three people – two sick crew members and another person who had been in contact with one of the confirmed cases – from the ship, which later left its anchorage at Cape Verde and set off for Spain’s Canary Islands.
After being taken from the ship to an ambulance boat by medical staff, the three later left on flights at the airport in Cape Verde’s capital Praia. A medical plane with two evacuated passengers later landed at Amsterdam Airport in the Netherlands.
The fate of the MV Hondius caused international concern, after three people traveling on the ship died. (Photo: AFP)
German emergency services said they picked up one evacuee in Amsterdam who came into contact with an infected person on board the ship, and transported the individual to a hospital in Düsseldorf.
Experts have confirmed that the version of the virus detected on board the MV Hondius is a rare strain and is known as the Andes virus, the only one that can be transmitted between humans.
The first person who had the virus on the ship could not have been infected during the voyage, given the incubation period of one to six weeks, a WHO expert told AFP.
The ship left Ushuaia, Argentina on 1 April and the first death occurred on 11 April.
Argentine officials said the first couple to die had visited Chile, Uruguay and Argentina before the cruise. They said experts will travel to Ushuaia to test rodents there for hantavirus.
The ship has been at the center of an international health crisis since Saturday, when the WHO was notified that three passengers had died and the suspected cause was hantavirus. The rare respiratory disease is usually spread by infected rodents, typically through urine, faeces and saliva.