Passengers evacuated from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship began flying home aboard military and government planes Sunday after the vessel anchored in the Canary Islands, with one American testing positive and a French traveler developing symptoms for the pathogen aboard their separate aircraft.
One the 17 American passengers evacuated from the MV Hondius tested positive for the hantavirus but is not showing any symptoms, U.S. health officials said late Sunday.
Earlier, one of the five French passengers developed symptoms on their flight home, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said in a statement, and all were put into strict isolation with plans to be tested.
Passengers were evacuated off the MV Hondius following its arrival in Tenerife, the largest island in the Spanish archipelago off the West African coast.
Earlier, officials from the Spanish Health Ministry, the World Health Organization and the cruise company Oceanwide Expeditions had said none of the more than 140 people who were then on the Hondius had shown symptoms of the virus.
The aircraft carrying the Americans was due to arrive in Omaha, Nebraska, early Monday.
The Americans would first be taken to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which has a federally funded quarantine facility, to assess whether they have been in close contact with any symptomatic people and their risk levels for spreading the virus.
The medical school also has a special unit for treating people with highly infectious diseases that was used early in the pandemic for COVID-19 patients and previously for Ebola patients.
“One passenger will be transported to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit upon arrival, while other passengers will go to the National Quarantine Unit for assessment and monitoring. The passenger who is going to the Biocontainment Unit tested positive for the virus but does not have symptoms,” said Kayla Thomas, a spokesperson for the Nebraska Medicine hospital that will help care for the passengers.
From the ship, all of the passengers were escorted to shore by personnel in full-body protective gear and breathing masks. Spanish passengers were the first to leave, flown to Madrid and taken to a military hospital. Hours later, a plane that evacuated French passengers landed in Paris, where it was met by emergency vehicles.
The planes arriving in Tenerife were to fly out passengers from more than 20 countries in an evacuation effort that was expected to last until Monday.
Japan’s Foreign Ministry said a Japanese national arrived in Britain on a chartered flight arranged by the British government and will be under health monitoring by British authorities for up to 45 days.
Three people have died since the outbreak began, and five people who left the ship earlier are infected with hantavirus.
Health officials say risk to public is low
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterated that the general public should not be worried about the outbreak.
“We have been repeating the same answer many times,” he said. “This is not another COVID. And the risk to the public is low. So they shouldn’t be scared, and they shouldn’t panic.”
Even so, those disembarking and workers at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife wore protective gear during the evacuation process, including hazardous-materials suits, face masks and respirators. Video obtained by The Associated Press showed passengers on the tarmac donning similar suits and being sprayed with disinfectant.
Passengers were relieved to be on their way home, another WHO official said. “It’s been great seeing all the buses coming out and people really happy to be on land again and being repatriated,” said Diana Rojas Alvarez, the WHO health operations lead, who is on Tenerife.
Authorities have said the disembarking passengers and crew members will be checked for symptoms and will be forbidden from having any contact with the local population. They were to be taken off the ship only when evacuation flights are ready. Tedros and Spain’s health and interior ministers are supervising the operation in Tenerife.
Hantavirus usually spreads when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings, and the disease is not easily transmitted between people. But the Andes virus detected in the cruise ship outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
Passengers and disembarking crew members left behind their luggage and were allowed to take only a small bag with essentials, a cellphone, a charger and documentation.
Some crew, as well as the body of a passenger who died on board, will remain on the ship, which will sail on to Rotterdam, Netherlands, where it will undergo disinfection, Spanish authorities said.
The journey to Rotterdam takes about five days, the cruise company said.
Passengers will be monitored
The WHO is recommending that passengers’ home countries “have active monitoring and follow-up, which means daily health checks, either at home or in a specialized facility,” said Maria van Kerkhove, the organization’s top epidemiologist.
“We are leaving this up to the countries themselves to actually develop their own policies,” she added. “But our recommendations are very clear.”
Numerous countries have said their people will be quarantined or hospitalized for observation.
In the U.K., for example, authorities have said passengers will be hospitalized for 72 hours of quarantine, followed by six weeks of self-isolation.
The French had planned a similar protocol, but after Sunday’s flight, the prime minister said the five passengers would be kept in the hospital “until further orders.”
A Dutch evacuation plane touched down Sunday evening in the Netherlands city of Eindhoven, with disembarking passengers wearing masks and carrying belongings in white plastic bags. The 26 aboard included eight Dutch citizens, as well as people from India, Germany, Argentina, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Ukraine, Guatemala, the Philippines and Montenegro, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said.
The Dutch citizens were being taken home by medical transport and will self-quarantine for six weeks. Local health services were arranging quarantine locations for others.
The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, said Americans would first be flown to the University of Nebraska. After that, he told CNN’s “State of the Union,” they will be given the choice of staying in Nebraska or going home, where their conditions would be monitored by state and local health agencies.
He made the comments before the report one passenger had tested positive.
He noted that seven Americans who left the cruise have been in the U.S. for roughly two weeks, and they are living across the country.
Australia is sending a plane, expected to arrive Monday, to evacuate its people and those from nearby countries, such as New Zealand, and unspecified Asian countries, said Spanish Health Minister Mónica García, who added that the evacuation flight was expected to be the last to leave Tenerife.
Norway sent an ambulance plane to the island with personnel trained to transport patients with high-risk infections, its Directorate for Civil Protection told public broadcaster NRK.
British medics parachute into remote territory
Elsewhere, British Army medics parachuted onto the remote South Atlantic territory of Tristan da Cunha, where one of the 221 residents has a suspected case of hantavirus.
The patient was a passenger on the MV Hondius and disembarked last month.
The U.K. Defense Ministry said a team of six paratroopers and two medical clinicians jumped Saturday from a Royal Air Force transport plane, which also dropped oxygen and medical equipment.
Tristan da Cunha is Britain’s most remote inhabited overseas territory, about 1.500 miles (2.400 kilometers) from the nearest inhabited island, St. Helena. The group of volcanic islands has no airstrip and is usually accessible only by a six-day boat voyage from Cape Town, South Africa.
