The first plane carrying passengers from a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship has left Spain’s Canary Islands.
On the chartered flight were 14 Spanish nationals who are on their way to Madrid from Tenerife. They face mandatory quarantine at a military hospital upon arrival.
Ahead of their entry onto a plane, staff involved in the operation pulled white hazmat suits over their clothes and hosed them down next to the stairs of the plane before boarding.
Passengers are being evacuated by nationality, with French nationals reportedly the second group to leave the island.
Health Minister Mónica García said the operation was “proceeding normally” and that all passengers on board the MS Hondius were asymptomatic.
The MV Hondius pulled into the port of Granadilla before dawn on Sunday, a month after the first passenger died on board.
The sun rose to reveal it anchored offshore, with military police boats on patrol and a major operation unfolding on land to help more than 100 passengers and crew disembark.
At about 07:00 (06:00 GMT), medical teams went on board to check everyone for signs of the virus.
With a long camera lens, passengers could be seen on Sunday morning wandering around on the deck of the ship, or at the windows, all in white medical face masks, as the first evacuations took place.
Several sat socially distanced on the first evacuation boat, filming and taking photos as they approached land, where they were met by officials in white protective suits.
They were then taken by bus to the local airport.
Passengers flown out by the Netherlands, including Dutch, Greek and German passengers, and part of the crew, were expected to follow.
Other flights are poised to depart after that, including to the UK and US. The last evacuation flight is expected to leave for Australia on Monday.
The cruise passengers face having to self-isolate after leaving Tenerife, a gruelling prospect as the virus has an incubation period of up to nine weeks.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended a 42-day quarantine period for the cruise passengers from their last exposure.
Passengers from the UK will be taken to an isolation facility where they will be kept for up to 72 hours. Medics will then assess whether they can isolate at home or at another suitable location based on their living arrangements.
There had been meticulous preparations to receive the ship, whichis not permitted to reach shore: a security perimeter of one nautical mile was enforced around it as it approached the island.
Dozens of intensive care specialists were on stand-by at the Candelaria hospital in Tenerife in case anyone from the Hondius becomes seriously ill during the transfer. A strict isolation facility has one bed fully equipped to deal with infectious diseases, complete with testing kit and a ventilator.
“We are absolutely ready,” chief intensive care doctor Mar Martin told me on the unit, where large numbers of protective suits, masks and gloves are already piled up for staff.
“We’ve never seen [hantavirus] before – but it’s a virus, with some complications, just like we manage every day. We are fully trained for that.”
The complex operation to prevent the rare Andes strain of this virus spreading was described by health minister Mónica García as “unprecedented”.
On Saturday, she stressed that the risk of contagion for the general population was low. “We believe that alarmism, misinformation and confusion are contrary to the basic principles of preserving public health.”
The WHO’s headTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is in Tenerife to oversee the disembarking, said the operation was “going very well”.
The outbreak has been linked to a landfill site in the southernmost tip of Argentina, popular with birdwatchers. The virus is carried there by rodents, and it’s rare for it to pass between people, but three cruise passengers have died.
The WHO boss has urged nervous Spaniards to trust those in charge of the evacuation.
“Your concern is legitimate, because of the experience of Covid: that trauma is still in our minds,” he acknowledged. But he added that the risk of wider contagion now was low “because of how the virus works, and because of how the Spanish government has prepared to avoid any problem”.
There was some anger here when people learned the Hondius was being diverted to their island.
On Friday, a group of port workers gathered outside the local parliament in noisy protest, concerned that safety measures were not strong enough.
Then very late last night, all the carefully laid plans were briefly thrown into chaos when the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, said he would refuse to permit the ship into port as the disembarkation could not be done in a day. The central government in Madrid had to intervene.
Clavijo then claimed on TV that a rat carrying the hantavirus might “get off the ship in the middle of the night and endanger the people of the Canary Islands”. The health secretary had to come out and insist that such a scenario was “not a risk”.
In general, people on the island seem reassured that the risk is low.
“The virus is dangerous, of course. But they say you need to have very close contact to get it,” a woman named Jennifer told me, out walking with her child in Tenerife’s capital Santa Cruz.
“If we’re careful, we hope it’s not too serious.”
Not everyone will disembark in Tenerife from the Hondius: some 30 crew members will stay on board to take the cruise ship back to the Netherlands. But for most, there is at last an end in sight to weeks of fear and uncertainty at sea.
Now come the long weeks of quarantine.
