Spain readies for evacuations as hantavirus cruise ship heads to Canary Islands

Yesterday, the WHO said a flight attendant on a plane that briefly carried an infected cruise passenger tested negative for the hantavirus.

Her possible infection had raised concerns about the possible transmissibility of the virus.

The flight attendant’s negative result should ease public concerns, said Christian Lindmeier, a WHO spokesman. “The risk remains absolutely low,” he said.

Hantavirus is usually spread by inhaling infected rodent feces and is not easily transmitted between people.

But the Andean virus discovered in the cruise ship outbreak could potentially spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms usually appear between one and eight weeks after exposure.

Health authorities on four continents continued to track down and monitor more than 20 passengers who disembarked before the deadly outbreak was discovered.

They also tried to track down others who may have come into contact with them since then.

Countries are rushing to track passengers who have disembarked

On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger died on board, more than 20 people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, Dutch officials and the ship’s operator said.

It was only on May 2 that health authorities confirmed the hantavirus in a ship passenger for the first time, the WHO said.

The KLM flight attendant who tested negative for the virus was on a flight from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on April 25 and later fell ill.

She was taken to an isolation ward of an Amsterdam hospital on Thursday.

The cruise passenger who was briefly aboard that flight, a Dutch woman whose husband died on the ship, was too ill to remain on the international flight to Europe and was taken off the plane in Johannesburg, where she died.

The Dutch GGD is currently conducting contact investigation into passengers of the flight who had contact with the sick woman before she left the plane.

On Friday, British health authorities said a third British citizen who had been a passenger on the ship is suspected of being infected with the hantavirus.

Britain’s Health Security Agency said the person is on Tristan da Cunha Island, a remote British Overseas Territory in the south Atlantic Ocean where the ship stopped in April.

There was no word on the person’s condition.

Spanish health officials said Friday that a woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante has symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection and is being tested.

She was a passenger on the same flight as the Dutch woman who died in Johannesburg after traveling on the cruise ship and contracting the virus, Health Secretary Javier Padilla told reporters.

Authorities in South Africa are trying to trace the contacts of passengers who previously disembarked the ship.

They have focused mainly on an April 25 flight from the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena to Johannesburg, the day after some passengers disembarked.

Spanish authorities announce disembarkation plans

Officials sought to reassure the public in the Canary Islands about possible exposure to the virus among the general population.

Spanish officials said that once the ship reaches Tenerife, passengers will not be evacuated in small boats to buses until their repatriation flights are ready to take them.

Passengers will be transported in isolated and guarded vehicles, officials said, adding that the areas of the airport they travel through will be cordoned off.

Spain has requested medically equipped planes in case passengers report symptoms, Barcones said, to avoid any contact with the general population, but it was not known whether they would be available.

The US agreed to send a plane to repatriate the 17 Americans aboard the cruise ship.

Those passengers will be quarantined at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine, the hospital said in a statement.

The special biocontainment and quarantine unit in Omaha was previously used to treat Ebola patients and some of the first COVID-19 patients.

Nebraska Medicine is one of the few hospitals in the US with specialized treatment units for people with very dangerous infectious diseases.

“We are prepared for situations like this,” said Dr. Michael Ash, Chief Executive of Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement.

The British government also said it will charter a plane to evacuate the nearly two dozen British nationals on board.

NEVER MISS A STORY: Be the first to receive your latest news and exclusive stories by following us on all platforms.