A plane carrying two sick hantavirus cruise passengers landed at Amsterdam airport early Thursday morning with the pair then transferred to a waiting convoy of ambulances.
The cruise ship, which has been hit by the deadly outbreak, is now expected to reach the Spanish island of Tenerife “within three days”, with the evacuation of the remaining passengers to start from May 11, Spain said Wednesday.
The WHO said emergency crews evacuated three people — two sick crew members and another person who had been in contact with one of the confirmed cases — from the ship Wednesday, which later left its anchorage off Cape Verde and headed for Spain’s Canary Islands.
Sign up to The Nightly’s newsletters.
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.
By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.
After being taken from the ship to an ambulance boat by medical personnel in hazmat suits, the three evacuees later boarded flights at the airport in Cape Verde’s capital Praia.
A medical plane carrying two evacuated passengers landed at Amsterdam Airport in the Netherlands on Wednesday evening, local time.
German emergency services said they had picked up one evacuee in Amsterdam who came into contact with an infected person on board the ship, and were transporting the individual to a hospital in Dusseldorf.
Another medical plane landed at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands earlier Wednesday.
Spanish officials said that plane had landed because of a “broken isolation bubble”. Spain’s health ministry said a new plane would be needed to travel on to the Netherlands.
One passenger, Ruhi Cenet, a 35-year-old Turkish travel vlogger, said what started out as an idyllic voyage turned chaotic when the ship’s captain announced on April 12 that a passenger had died.
“He said it was due to natural causes,” Cenet told AFP.
“They didn’t even consider the possibility of having such a contagious disease,” he added.
“They didn’t take the problem seriously enough.”
DFAT has reportedly said there are four Australians on board the ship, who are not currently showing any symptoms.
The MV Hondius cruise ship is now on its way to the Canary Islands. Credit: Arilson Almeida/AP
Low global risk: WHO
The fate of the MV Hondius has sparked international alarm after three people travelling on the ship died, though World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted the outbreak was not comparable to the Covid pandemic.
“The risk to the rest of the world is low,” he said.
Experts confirmed the version of the virus detected aboard the Hondius was a rare strain known as the Andes virus, the only one that can be transmitted between humans.
The rare respiratory disease is usually spread from infected rodents, typically through urine, droppings and saliva.
The first person to have the virus on the ship could not have been infected during the cruise, given the one- to six-week incubation period, WHO expert Anais Legand said.
The ship left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1, and the first death occurred on April 11.
Argentine officials said the first couple who diedkilled had visited Chile, Uruguay and Argentina before the cruise.
They said experts would travel to Ushuaia to test rodents there for hantavirus.
Argentina has seen an increase in hantavirus cases, but not an outbreak, expert Raul Gonzalez Ittig said.
A Dutch man died on board on April 11, and his wife, who left the ship to accompany his body to South Africa, died there 15 days later after also falling ill.
Two other people are still being treated — one in Johannesburg and one in the Swiss city of Zurich.
Two people who returned to the UK from the ship have been advised to self-isolate, the UK Health Security Agency said, adding they were asymptomatic and insisting the risk to the public was “very low”.
Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia Gomez said the vessel would dock within the next three days in Tenerife, in the Canaries, and all foreign passengers would be flown back to their home countries from there if their health allowed.
Contact tracing
The Dutch woman who died had flown on a commercial plane from the island of Saint Helena to Johannesburg while she was showing symptoms.
Officials were trying to trace people on that flight, which South African-based carrier Airlink said was carrying 82 passengers and six crew.
Fuelling fears of further contact, Dutch airline KLM said on Wednesday that one of the people who died from the virus had been “briefly” on its flight from Johannesburg to the Netherlands on April 25, but was removed before take-off.
The cruise ship originally counted 88 passengers and 59 crew, with 23 nationalities on board.
