The head of the World Health Organization has addressed local anger in Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands, where passengers from a hantavirus-hit cruise ship will be allowed to disembark on Sunday.
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Residents have taken to the streets to protest the incoming arrival of the MV Hondius, after the Spanish government overruled local leaders to grant permission for the ship to anchor offshore. Many have voiced concerns about the economic impact of any outbreak on the island, which is heavily reliant on tourism.
Protests continued on Saturday, with local residents shouting “Yes to tourism, no to the virus.”
Eight cases of hantavirus have been linked to the outbreak on the ship, as of the latest WHO update on Saturday, and three people have died.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued a direct appeal to locals on Saturday.
Though the virus is “serious,” he said, “the risk to you, living your daily life in Tenerife, is low. This is the WHO’s assessment, and we do not make it lightly.”
He stressed the WHO’s request to Spain came under a “legally binding framework,” adding: “Nearly 150 people from 23 countries have been at sea for weeks, some of them grieving, all of them frightened, all of them longing for home. Tenerife has been chosen because it has the medical capacity, the infrastructure, and the humanity to help them reach safety.”
The ship is due to anchor offshore early on Sunday. Most of the passengers and crew will be ferried ashore at the Granadilla port in small boats, and taken directly to planes to repatriate them to their home countries in sealed, guarded vehicles, Tedros said.
“You will not encounter them,” he assured local residents. “Your families will not encounter them.”
The health chief said he would travel to Tenerife to “observe this operation firsthand, to stand alongside the health workers, port staff, and officials who are making it happen.”
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the World Health Organization, told a media briefing on Saturday that a health screening is taking place aboard the ship.
At the moment, nobody on board the ship has any symptoms, including passengers and crew, she said, with contact tracing taking place to determine those who were likely exposed to carriers.
“The goal” is for all of the repatriation flights to take place across Sunday and Monday, Van Kerkhove said.
Several nations, including the U.S., Germany, France, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands, have sent planes to evacuate their citizens, Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said Saturday.
Thirty crew members will stay aboard the ship and sail to the Netherlands along with the body of a dead passenger.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has deployed a team to Tenerife to meet the 17 Americans who are due to disembark from the ship. They will be flown on a flight arranged by the State Department to a specialist quarantine facility in Nebraska previously used to house patients in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Their quarantine period is unclear. Dr. Michael Wadman, director of the National Quarantine Unit, has said the duration will be determined after an “epidemiological assessment.”
Van Kerkhove said Saturday the WHO would recommend “active monitoring and follow-up” of all passengers and crew for a 42-day period from their “last point of exposure” to a confirmed case.
