Mon, May 11, 2026 at 11:50 AM UTC
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The 14 Spanish passengers who were evacuated from the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius cruise ship and who are now being quarantined in a hospital in Madrid will remain there for the World Health Organization’s recommended 42-day period, Javier Padilla, Spain’s secretary of state for health, said on Monday.
Initially, the passengers will be isolated from both the outside world and each other.
Their quarantine is currently scheduled to end on June 17.
“The quarantine will be 42 days. That’s what we’ve been working on with the World Health Organization (WHO), and it will be 42 days,” Padilla told Spain’s national radio service, RNE.
The 42-day period dates back to May 6, when authorities determined that measures imposed on the ship would “break the chains of transmission,” per Padilla, whose country enforced one of the strictest lockdowns in the world in the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic.
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Padilla said this following week of quarantine would be “stricter”, with the situation reassessed on a week-by-week basis, adding that the quarantined passengers currently “tell us they are fine.”
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