A cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak will dock “within three days” at Granadilla on the island of Tenerife, Spain’s health minister said Wednesday, despite opposition from the Canary Islands regional government.
“A joint system for health assessment and evacuation will be put in place to repatriate all passengers, unless their medical condition prevents it,” Health Minister Monica Garcia Gomez told a Madrid news conference.
The owner of the cruise ship stricken by a deadly hantavirus outbreak requested to dock on Saturday in Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands, the head of the archipelago’s regional government said.
“The shipowner – and this is a request that is currently being considered – has asked to dock on the 9th, to berth in a port in Tenerife,” Fernando Clavijo told reporters in Brussels, adding he had been notified of the request by the port authority.
German emergency services will on Wednesday transfer a person evacuated from a cruise ship stricken with a deadly outbreak of hantavirus from the Netherlands to a hospital in Germany, officials said.
The individual came into contact with an infected person on board the MV Hondius, anchored off Cape Verde, but is asymptomatic, the fire service in the western German city of Duesseldorf told AFP.
They did not provide any further details about the person, such as nationality or gender.
The World Health Organization said earlier that three people – two crew members and one other person thought to be infected – were being evacuated from the ship and would be flown to the Netherlands.
A team from the fire service are on their way to pick up the individual, who will then be taken to the university hospital in Duesseldorf, the spokesman told AFP.
“The earliest we expect the transport to be back is in the evening,” he said, adding that the hospital had “various options” for dealing with such a case.
Hantavirus outbreak on cruise ship prompts Dutch emergency operation
Three people have died on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, including one confirmed hantavirus…
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The vessel has been at the centre of an international health scare since Saturday, when the UN’s health agency was informed that three passengers had died and the suspected cause was hantavirus.
Asked whether the World Health Organization (WHO) deemed the hantavirus situation similar to the emergency at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “No, I don’t think so.”
The rare disease is usually spread from infected rodents, typically through urine, droppings and saliva. Laboratory testing in South Africa and Switzerland confirmed that the cases from the ship were due to the Andes strain of hantavirus, the only one known to pass between humans.
There are no vaccines or specific medications for hantavirus.
Last year, the wife of Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman died of the disease.
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Source:
www.euractiv.com