The passengers, none of whom were showing symptoms of the virus, were taken to Tenerife airport in military buses to be evacuated from the island in government planes sent by their respective countries, government officials said, emphasising that they will have no contact with the public.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended a 42-day quarantine for all passengers from the boat from Sunday.
Planes for the Spanish and French nationals had departed by 1130 GMT. Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, Turkey, Ireland, and the United States were listed by Spanish health minister Monica Garcia as the next countries to evacuate their citizens, with the Dutch plane also due to take Germans, Belgians and Greeks.
Passengers are disembarked from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife (PA)
A plane from Australia which would transport its citizens as well as passengers from New Zealand and other unspecified Asian countries was due to land on Monday and depart by the afternoon, Garcia said.
Hantavirus, which is usually spread by rodents but can in rare cases be transmitted person-to-person, was first detected on May 2, 21 days after the first passenger died, by South African health officials testing a British man who was in intensive care. Two other former passengers have died since.
The luxury cruise ship left for Spain on Wednesday from the coast of Cape Verde after the WHO and European Union asked the country to manage the evacuation of passengers after the hantavirus outbreak was detected.
The agency said the first case may have been infected before boarding, possibly during travel in Argentina and Chile, with later spread likely occurring on the ship.
No rodents detected on ship
The WHO said in an update on Friday that eight people no longer on the ship had fallen ill, including the three who died – a Dutch couple and a German national. Of the eight, six are confirmed to have contracted the virus.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in Tenerife to oversee the evacuation, said on Sunday that WHO experts were working alongside Spanish health officials to test the passengers.
One Spanish woman, who was suspected of having the virus after sharing a flight with one of the patients who later died, tested negative late on Saturday.
Passengers on board the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius after arriving at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife on Sunday (Manu Fernandez/AP)
The UK military has parachuted a specialist team onto the remote island of Tristan da Cunha to provide medical support to the second suspected case, a British man who was a passenger on the ship and lives on the island in the South Atlantic.
Four patients remain hospitalised in South Africa, the Netherlands and Switzerland, while a suspected case sent to Germany tested negative.
All passengers on the MV Hondius are considered high-risk contacts as a precautionary measure, Europe’s public health agency said late on Saturday as part of its rapid scientific advice, adding that the risk to the general population remains low.
Spain’s health ministry said in a report on the ship passing the appropriate health checks: “There are more than 500 cruise ships a year that come from Argentina and Chile, which is home to the virus, and yet an outbreak of this illness has never happened in European territory so the possibility it happens in relation to this ship is remote.”
It also said rodents had not been detected aboard the ship.
Passengers will not leave the boat until their allocated evacuation plane has arrived, Spanish officials said.
Thirty crew members will remain on board and sail to the Netherlands where the ship will be disinfected.
Irish passengers
It comes as two Irish citizens stranded on the cruise ship are expected to be flown home to Ireland by air ambulance and will have to quarantine in a HSE facility.
The two Irish women will then probably have to be quarantined for up to six weeks to ensure they are not carrying the infection. It is understood that officials in the Department of Health and the HSE are examining whether the women can be quarantined at home or must be in a medical facility.
Irish officials have been liaising with Spanish and EU authorities to plan safe and socially distanced transport home for the two Irish women.
The MV Hondius reached the island of Tenerife on Sunday. Once the ship has docked, passengers will be tested on board before they disembark.
The Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers said the government jet is on the way to collect the two Irish passengers from Tenerife and they will arrive back home this evening.
“The two Irish passengers are due back in Ireland later this evening, and they’ll be isolated and in quarantine for about five weeks,” he said.
“I understand they’re safe and well and haven’t any symptoms, but are following strict protocols when they return to Ireland, obviously, to protect broader public health.
“The National Health Protection office has stood up their incident management team so that we protect everybody, but also ensure that their health and wellbeing is protected over the next number of weeks,” the Minister said on RTÉ Radio.
Passengers on the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Tenerife (AP)
The Department of Health said the two Irish citizens will be transferred directly to Ireland from Tenerife and will be quarantined in a HSE facility.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the Department confirmed that an Air Corps aircraft has departed Baldonnel and is “en-route to Spain to undertake an aeromedical evacuation of two Irish citizens and have them repatriated to Ireland”.
“The cruise ship MV Hondius docked this morning (Sunday) in Tenerife and the Spanish Authorities have confirmed that the assessment of the current health status of passengers and disembarkation process is underway and proceeding well,” a spokesperson said.
“The return of passengers and crew from MV Hondius has been carefully planned and guided by public health authorities to ensure safety for everyone—these measures protect communities while respecting the dignity and wellbeing of those returning home. Spanish Authorities are responsible for the safe disembarkation and transfer of passengers to their respective aircraft in Tenerife.
“There are two Irish nationals on board the ship, who we understand are currently in good health and have been following isolation protocols on board. Both the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Health Service Executive (HSE) have been in direct contact with the passengers.
“Repatriation plans have been put in place by the Irish Government to transfer the two Irish passengers directly from Tenerife to Ireland today (Sunday), contingent on their health status upon disembarkation.
“HSE medics will accompany the Irish passengers home on Sunday. Both passengers will isolate for a period of time in a HSE facility, in line with European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance.
“For purposes of patient confidentiality, no further information will be provided on their care.
“Both the ECDC and WHO have classified the risk to public health from Hantavirus at the lowest level provided for within their respective assessment frameworks.
“The WHO has said that as this is the first documented outbreak of Hantavirus aboard a ship, a highly precautionary approach is being implemented. Measures are being taken out of an abundance of caution to protect the health of passengers and crew and the general public.”
Irish passenger Ann Lane was said by friends to be keen to get home. Senator Aubrey McCarthy, founder of Tiglin, the charity where Ms Lane volunteers, said the Department of Health briefed Ms Lane this weekend on her air evacuation from Spain and quarantine in Ireland.
“Ann is in very good spirits,” he said. “She is hoping to dock in the Canaries in the early hours of [this morning]. One thing she did say is she was delighted with the arrangement.”
Mr McCarthy, who spoke by phone to Ms Lane yesterday, said there is a “question mark” over the length of quarantine period that Ms Lane and the friend she is travelling with may have to endure on their return, but added that she was “hugely positive”.
Ms Lane is well known in Irish political circles, having worked for several senior politicians, including former president Mary Robinson and Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik.
Colm Henry, chief clinical officer with the HSE, declined to comment on transport arrangements, but said the priority is to get the passengers home safely.
“For the cruise ship and the passengers on board, this is a very serious situation, and it is of huge concern to their families,” Dr Henry said.
“We consider the risk to the population to be very low. This is not influenza. This is not Covid-19. It is not something so contagious that it can spread across the Irish population.”
He said there will be a period of quarantine for the passengers: “As with any such illnesses where quarantine is required, we have to adhere to the same protocols. That will involve not just safe transport of the passengers, but a period of quarantine.”
“We are coordinating with our Embassy in Madrid, responsible for the Canary Islands, as well as with colleagues in the Department of Health on support to the citizens,” a spokesperson said.
The European Union is sending two further planes for remaining European citizens, Spain’s interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska added. The US and UK have confirmed planes and contingency plans were being arranged for non-EU citizens whose countries were unable to send air transport, he said.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will meet Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Madrid on Saturday afternoon and then travel to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, alongside Spain’s interior and health ministers to coordinate the arrival of the ship.
News in 90 seconds – May 9
Ms Lane and her travelling companion boarded the MV Hondius in Argentina at the beginning of April for an expedition to Cape Verde.
An outbreak of the hantavirus struck the cruise ship days after it departed Argentina.
The hantavirus is usually spread through contact or inhalation of contaminated rodent-droppings. The outbreak has been linked to a rare strain that spreads by human contact.
Eight passengers have been confirmed as contracting the hantavirus. Three of them have died.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the virus is not easily transmissible and the risk to passengers and crew on the ship is “moderate”. Common symptoms of the virus include muscle aches, extreme tiredness, fever, headaches and vomiting, though other symptoms can be more severe.
The expedition was organised by Oceanwide Expeditions. There are 88 passengers and 59 crew on board, according to WHO. It was Ms Lane’s sixth expedition and her fourth trip to Antarctica.
The ship set off from Ushuaia in the far south of Argentina on April 1, with stops in Antarctica and on several isolated Atlantic Ocean islands.
On April 6, a Dutch passenger was the first to fall ill. He died on board on April 11. Before joining the cruise, he had been sightseeing in Ushuaia with his wife, who also developed symptoms.
We need your consent to load this Social Media content. We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity.
Please review your details and accept them to load the content
The man’s body was removed from the ship on April 24, when the ship docked at St Helena. His wife also disembarked, along with other passengers. She collapsed and died on April 26 at an airport in Johannesburg after getting off a flight from St Helena.
Authorities on Cape Verde refused to allow passengers and crew to disembark last Sunday, forcing the ship to continue to the Canary Islands in Spain.
Health authorities across several countries are now racing to trace other passengers who disembarked from the liner in a bid to test for and contain further outbreaks of the hantavirus.
Mr McCarthy said Ms Lane, an experienced traveller and a positive person, was dealing well with the ordeal.
“She gave me some idea of how things are going [and] that there are no rats on the ship. The place is immaculate,” he said, adding that she had gotten to know the passengers on the ship, including the ship’s doctor, who has also fallen ill.
“Remember, this is her sixth expedition, so she knows the staff of the boat really well. This is her community.”
Sam McConkey, an expert in infectious diseases who heads the department of international health and tropical medicine at RCSI, said the evacuation and repatriation of the passengers will require mask-wearing and social distancing.
“It generally doesn’t continue to propagate in humans. It ceases to spread once you start using isolation and masks and the ventilation controls that we did with Covid,” Prof McConkey said.
“Unfortunately, with this virus, it can take six to eight weeks to show up, so the period of social distancing is longer than it was with Covid. [Passengers] probably cannot fly on an ordinary commercial flight and may have to go on a special air ambulance.”
Once in Ireland, Ms Lane and her friend will be asked to self-isolate, most likely at home, with daily or twice-daily check-ins to monitor potential symptoms.
“It is very manageable,” Prof McConkey said. “I think it’s very important that those people do get home, as our systems in Ireland are competently able to look after people like this well.”
The hantavirus is less infectious than Covid-19, he said: “Given that the ship was in Argentina around April 1, and we are now five weeks later, and we have eight or so people [of the 150 or so on board] infected, it looks like it is not spreading fast or very widely.”
This is not like the Covid pandemic, he said, but a small outbreak of a rare virus.
Hantavirus is extremely rare in Ireland. The small number of cases recorded here were diagnosed in people who had travelled in affected areas.
Mr McCarthy raised Ms Lane’s case in the Seanad last week, saying that, while Ms Lane was “very positive”, behind her humour was a “very serious situation”.
All passengers as well as 17 crew members will be evacuated but 30 crew will stay on board and travel on to the Netherlands, Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia said. Luggage and the body of a deceased passenger on the ship will remain on board and the ship will be fully disinfected on arrival, she added.
Spanish citizens will disembark first, with the order of evacuation of the remaining groups of citizens to be determined by health authorities. Citizens will not be able to disembark until their evacuation plane is ready to depart, Grande-Marlaska said.
WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebrey said on X that he was in contact with the ship’s captain and a WHO colleague who is on board who said that, at this stage, there are no additional people on board showing symptoms of Hantavirus.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday that morale has improved on board since the ship started its journey to Tenerife.
It said two doctors are on board along with infectious disease experts from the WHO and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), who are conducting a medical assessment of all passengers and crew.