The evacuation of passengers from the Hondius, the cruise ship hit by the hantavirus epidemic in Tenerife, will begin on May 11, with three of its passengers dead and five showing symptoms .

The ship docked despite strong opposition from the Canary Islands government, while three other suspected cases have already been evacuated from the ship to the Netherlands for treatment.

The World Health Organization is attempting to quell the international alarm raised by the incident, with Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterating that the situation is not similar to that of the onset of Covid . But controversy is mounting over the handling of the contact tracing of the sick who disembarked from the ship. It has been learned that two or three passengers disembarked on the island of Saint Helena on April 21, before the deaths, to return home . One was hospitalized in Zurich, having tested positive for the virus . A Frenchman was identified as a "contact case" because he had been on a flight with an infected person. KLM announced that on April 25, the passenger who later died in Johannesburg attempted to board a flight to Amsterdam but was disembarked due to his poor health. Two people who returned to the United Kingdom after being on board the ship have been asked to self-isolate, according to the UK's National Health and Safety Agency (UKHSA), which noted that "neither of them are currently showing symptoms." The medical operation to transfer two evacuees to Amsterdam on an air ambulance, which had to make a technical stop in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria due to a failure of one of the patients' protective bubble, concluded overnight .

The infection—this is the hypothesis being worked on—occurred after the deceased Dutch couple went on a birdwatching trip to Ushuaia, Argentina . They also visited a landfill, where they may have come into contact with rats carrying the virus. According to the reconstruction, the couple traveled through Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina.

Regarding evacuations from the ship, the Spanish Ministry of Health has stated that "all passengers will remain on board the cruise ship until their repatriation planes arrive." The 14 Spanish citizens aboard the MV Hondius, including one crew member, will be transferred to the Gomez Ulla Military Hospital in Madrid.

(Unioneonline)

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