By Joan Faus<\/p>\n
May 8 (Reuters) – Spain has agreed to receive a luxury cruise ship carrying 149 people from 23 countries that suffered an outbreak of hantavirus aboard which has killed three people. Four others have been confirmed to be infected and three further suspected cases \u200chave been reported.<\/p>\n
WHEN WILL THE SHIP ARRIVE IN SPAIN?<\/p>\n
The MV Hondius is expected to arrive in Tenerife – part of Spain’s Canary Islands located on \u200cthe Atlantic Ocean off West Africa – on Sunday around noon (1000 GMT), according to Spanish officials.<\/p>\n
The ship is not expected to dock at port but will instead sit at anchor nearby, with people onboard \u200btaken to land on smaller boats. Spain’s central government said this was a request from the island’s local authorities, though it stressed there was no indication that docking would have implied a public health risk.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization has said the wider threat to the public from the viral outbreak remains low.<\/p>\n
WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE PEOPLE ONBOARD?<\/p>\n
The ship, which began its journey on April 1 in Argentina, is carrying 88 passengers and 61 crew members including a deceased German national, according to cruise operator Oceanwide \u200cExpeditions. It said on Thursday that none of the remaining \u2060passengers currently displayed symptoms of infection.<\/p>\n
Once they arrive at the port of Granadilla, in Tenerife’s south, the evacuees will be moved to the island’s main airport about 10 minutes away, Spain’s civil protection and emergencies chief, Virginia Barcones, told state broadcaster TVE \u2060on Friday.<\/p>\n
They will likely be transferred to the airport on sealed-off buses whose drivers and emergency crew will be clad in protective gear, Barcones said. The buses would take them straight to the airport’s runway, where they would board their respective planes.<\/p>\n
It is unclear whether all crew members will leave the MV Hondius. Spain’s state secretary for health, Javier Padilla, \u200btold \u200bTVE the ship would eventually depart Spanish waters with the “necessary (number of) crew members” aboard.<\/p>\n
EVACUATION BY \u200bAIR<\/p>\n
The Spanish government said it expected to know on Friday which \u200ccountries would send charter airplanes to Tenerife to evacuate their nationals aboard the ship. The United States and Britain have already confirmed they will send planes, said Barcones, the Spanish official.<\/p>\n
For those countries who cannot arrange evacuation flights, there was the possibility of using airplanes from other countries, she said, adding that the coordination would ultimately depend on the European Commission and the Netherlands as the ship’s flag country.<\/p>\n
The Philippines, with a total of 38, Britain (23), the U.S. (17), Spain (14) and the Netherlands (13) are the countries with the highest number of people aboard, according to Oceanwide.<\/p>\n
LOCAL HOSPITAL ACTIVATED<\/p>\n
Although officials plan for everyone evacuated to be quickly flown out of Tenerife, \u200cthe authorities are nonetheless preparing a special isolated unit at a local hospital as a contingency \u200bmeasure, the local government and unions said.<\/p>\n
The Spanish nationals onboard the ship will be transferred by \u200bplane to a military hospital in Madrid.<\/p>\n
DEAD ON BOARD<\/p>\n
Of the three passengers \u200bwho died after being thought to have contracted the virus, one remains onboard. The Netherlands will handle the evacuation from Tenerife \u200cof the deceased German national following maritime and health norms, Barcones \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE SHIP?<\/p>\n
The MV Hondius \u200bwill have to continue its journey to the Netherlands due to its flag obligations, said Padilla, the Spanish health official, without elaborating on when that would occur.<\/p>\n
Authorities in the Canaries have said the goal was for the ship to spend the least time possible in the archipelago. Around one \u200bmillion people live in Tenerife.<\/p>\n
But Padilla said it still had \u200cto be determined whether the ship would be disinfected while anchored off Tenerife. “It will be done in the moment and place considered most \u200badequate. What we can guarantee is that it will be done without any (health) risks,” he said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Joan Faus, additional reporting by \u200bDavid Latona, Corina Pons and Bart H. MeijerEditing by Aislinn Laing and Nick Zieminski)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Joan Faus May 8 (Reuters) – Spain has agreed to receive a luxury cruise ship carrying 149…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9586,10460,17,3703,9645,10428],"class_list":{"0":"post-19383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-cruise-ship","9":"tag-javier-padilla","10":"tag-spain","11":"tag-tenerife","12":"tag-the-world-health-organization","13":"tag-virginia-barcones"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}