The Spanish health ministry confirmed on Tuesday evening it would receive the MV Hondius in the Canary Islands “in accordance with international law and humanitarian principles”.
Once in the Canary Islands, medical teams would examine and treat all passengers and crew and transfer them to their countries, the statement said.
“The World Health Organization [WHO] has explained that Cape Verde is unable to carry out this operation,” the health ministry said.
“The Canary Islands are the closest location with the necessary capabilities. Spain has a moral and legal obligation to assist these people, among whom are also several Spanish citizens.”
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Cape Verde’s health ministry said Tuesday evening three passengers on the ship who have been infected with the hantavirus are expected to be evacuated in the coming hours in two air ambulances.
One of the air ambulances is already in the Atlantic archipelago located off west Africa and the second aircraft is expected to arrive shortly, the ministry said in a statement.
Earlier, Spanish officials said disease experts would inspect the vessel before any decision on its destination was made.
The WHO also said Tuesday that some of those who had fallen ill may have been infected through human-to-human transmission, cautioning nonetheless that a full investigation was still needed and that human-to-human transmission remained rare.
“The risk to the general public is low,” Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s head of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, said at a news conference in Geneva.
“This is not a virus that spreads like flu or like Covid,” she added. “It’s quite different.”
The ship, the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, has been moored off the coast of Cape Verde, in recent days as government and health authorities scramble to find a way to evacuate sick people on-board.
The outbreak of hantavirus, a rare pathogen, has been tied to seven people on the ship so far, according to the WHO, with two confirmed cases and five suspected ones. Three people have died.
“We do know that some of the cases had very close contact with each other and certainly human-to-human transmission can’t be ruled out,” Van Kerkhove told reporters. Two of the victims, a Dutch couple, had been travelling in South America before boarding the ship and were sharing a cabin, she noted.
Hantavirus is primarily transmitted to humans by inhaling particles of mouse faeces or urine, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Van Kerkhove said at the news conference that the ship would head to the Canary Islands, a Spanish territory that is about 1,600km northeast of Cape Verde.
The MV Hondius departed from Argentina in early April with about 150 passengers and crew members. Officials from Cape Verde did not allow passengers to disembark, Oceanwide Expeditions, the vessel’s operator, said in a statement Monday.
“This is an isolated situation, confined to the vessel, posing no risk to national territory,” Ângela Gomes, Cape Verde’s national director of health, told local news outlets.
The WHO said that medical teams from Cape Verde had boarded the ship and recommended that all passengers remain in their cabins.
The first fatality was a 70-year-old Dutch man who died on-board the ship on April 11th. The man’s 69-year-old wife became ill and died on April 26th in Johannesburg while attempting to fly home to the Netherlands. The WHO said that it was working to trace other passengers on a flight the woman took from St Helena, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, to Johannesburg.
A third person, a German national, died on the ship on Saturday and the ship’s operators said that they were working to evacuate an individual “associated with” that victim.
For now, investigators are assuming that the cases involve the so-called Andes species of the virus, which has been known to cause some human-to-human transmission in close contact, Van Kerkhove said. Public health researchers in South Africa and Senegal were working to identify the remaining cases, she said.
Two patients still on-board the ship were being prepared for evacuation, Van Kerkhove added. A third person on-board who was suspected of having contracted the infection, she said, was “doing well and is asymptomatic”. Once the medical evacuation is completed, the ship is expected to leave Cape Verde’s waters by midnight, WHO officials in the country said.
A British citizen who was hospitalised in Johannesburg after falling ill on the ship is improving, Van Kerkhove said.
Hantavirus refers to a family of viruses that are carried by rodents. The illness caused by the virus can cause flu-like symptoms and is fatal in nearly 4 in 10 people.
With symptoms appearing up to eight weeks after initial exposure, health officials are trying to identify the source of the cruise ship outbreak.
The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1st, making stops in “remote and ecologically diverse” regions like mainland Antarctica, South Georgia, Nightingale Island, Tristan da Cunha, St Helena and Ascension Island.
“The extent of passenger contact with local wildlife during the voyage or prior to boarding in Ushuaia remains undetermined,” the WHO said.
Jake Rosmarin, a travel influencer who is on-board the MV Hondius, said in a social media post Monday that the uncertainty on the ship was weighing heavily on him.
“What’s happening right now is very real for all of us here,” he said in a tearful video. “All we want right now is to feel safe, to have clarity and to get home.” – The New York Times/Reuters
