After the departure from Montevideo of the last medical flight with passengers of the stranded Antarctic cruise Greg Mortimer, the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, sent a letter to Uruguay’s President, Luis Lacalle Pou, acknowledging the action of his government for its collaboration with Australian citizens.
The final leg of the humanitarian repatriation of passengers on board an Antarctic cruise, stranded in Uruguay and most of them testing positive for coronavirus, ended Wednesday afternoon when they boarded in Uruguay's Carrasco international airport a sanitary charter to Miami.
The last passengers residing on an Australian ocean liner, anchored off Montevideo for more than two weeks with cases of COVID-19 on board, will be evacuated to the United States by a medical chartered flight, announced on Tuesday the American embassy in Uruguay.
According to the estimates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Uruguayan economy will decrease by 3% this 2020. The “great closure” has been how the international body has defined, as the title of its World Economic Outlook, government measures against the global pandemic caused by the COVID-19.
With a large improvised banner reading “Gracias Uruguay” (Thank you Uruguay) on starboard the COVID-19 infected “Greg Mortimer” finally docked in the port of Montevideo on Friday and at 22:00 Uruguay hour started the medical evacuation of over a hundred cruisers from Australia and New Zealand who are to be charter flown to Melbourne, and expected to arrive on Easter Sunday.
The sanitary charter aircraft contracted to repatriate Australians on board the coronavirus infected “Greg Mortimer” cruise, stranded off the Uruguayan coast is expected this Thursday in Montevideo, and will be flying to Melbourne on Saturday according to foreign ministry sources.
A charter flight is expected in Montevideo on Thursday, April 9 to pick up and fly home to Australia most of passengers and crew on the “Greg Mortimer”, the cruise vessel stranded off the coast of Uruguay for the last two weeks because 128 people on board have tested positive for Covid 19.
Eighty-one people on the Greg Mortimer cruise ship, which has been stranded off the coast of Uruguay for almost two weeks and has over 90 Australians on board, have tested positive for coronavirus.
Uruguay's foreign and public health ministers have said that none of the over 200 people on board the cruise vessel Greg Mortimer will be allowed to disembark in Montevideo for the moment since several passengers and crew members seem to have coronavirus symptoms.
The 54th Special General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) on Friday re-elected Luis Almagro as Secretary-General and Nestor Mendez as Assistant Secretary-General of the Organization.