MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Tenerife braces for race-against-time operation to evacuate 140 from MV Hondius

The operational window is narrow. Canary Islands government spokesman Alfonso Cabello warned that the evacuation must be completed between Sunday and Monday

Spain faces a complex international operation in Tenerife on Sunday to evacuate the passengers and crew of the cruise ship MV Hondius, struck by a hantavirus outbreak that has left three dead and five laboratory-confirmed cases among the eight identified by the World Health Organization. The Dutch-flagged vessel, carrying more than 140 people and one body still on board, will anchor off the port of Granadilla between 3:00 and 5:00 a.m. local time.

The operational window is narrow. Canary Islands government spokesman Alfonso Cabello warned that the evacuation must be completed between Sunday and Monday, since worsening sea conditions would force the ship to resume sailing if the operation runs over. Without that opportunity, the procedure could not resume until late May.

The cruise will not dock. Passengers will be transferred by small boat to the port and from there, in sealed vehicles, to Tenerife South Airport, ten minutes away. Aircraft chartered by their respective countries will repatriate them with no contact with the local population. The United States and the United Kingdom have committed planes for their nationals. A Spanish military aircraft will fly the fourteen Spanish passengers to the Torrejón de Ardoz airbase, from where they will go into quarantine at the Gómez Ulla Defense General Hospital in Madrid.

Spanish Health Minister Mónica García, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus traveled to Tenerife on Saturday to oversee the operation, set up five days after the international health body asked Spain to receive the vessel.

Health authorities are still awaiting the PCR result of a 32-year-old woman admitted in Alicante with mild respiratory symptoms. She had been seated directly behind the Dutch woman who died after taking the same flight. Two other asymptomatic contacts from that flight have been traced, one in South Africa and the other in Catalonia. A KLM flight attendant who was also on the plane tested negative. The United Kingdom is additionally investigating a third suspected case on Tristan da Cunha.

The pathogen involved is the Andes virus, the only hantavirus strain capable of human-to-human transmission. The WHO maintains that the risk to the general public is low, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified the outbreak as a Level 3 emergency response, the lowest tier on its scale.