By The Opinion
The MV Hondius cruise ship, affected by a hantavirus outbreak, will dock next Saturday at the port of Granadilla de Abona on the Spanish Atlantic island of Tenerifefrom where the passengers will be evacuated to their respective countries of origin, the Spanish Government reported this Wednesday.
In the case of the fourteen Spaniards, including a crew member, they will be taken to a Gómez Ulla military health center in Madrid, after being examined in the Canary Islands archipelago, indicated the Minister of Health, Mónica García.
This health center has “high-level isolation units,” where they will be “quarantined,” the minister said in a press conference with the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, after a meeting chaired by the Chief Executive, Pedro Sánchez.
García explained that all passengers today are asymptomaticonce the three cases with symptoms and the cruise doctor, also sick, are already off the ship and were evacuated from Cape Verde, where the ship is still anchored.
The Spanish authorities had announced last night that they accepted the request of the World Health Organization (WHO) that the ship head to the Canary Islands, as well as the request of the Dutch Government that the doctor be evacuated to the Canary archipelago in an ambulance plane.
However, he finally decided to travel to the Netherlands after experiencing improvement.
A laboratory that collaborates with the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed today that The death of three people from the cruise ship, which was sailing through the Atlantic Ocean, was due to the strain Andes hantavirus, the only one for which transmission between humans has been documented.
The identification was possible thanks to a sample taken by a PCR test from a person who had been on board the affected ship, indicated a statement from the Center for Emerging Viral Diseases of the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG).
The luxury cruise departed from Argentina; At the beginning of April, a Dutch passenger developed symptoms and died on the 11th.
His wife already disembarked with symptoms on the island of Saint Helena, in the middle of the Atlantic, and took a flight to Johannesburg (South Africa), where she died in the emergency services of a health heart.
A second woman, a German national, died on May 2, four days after she began showing signs of pneumonia. EFE
