Plans for MV Hondius to dock in the Canary Islands have been rejected by local authorities.
The cruise ship – plagued by an outbreak of hantavirus – had been set to dock on the island of Tenerife, Spanish state broadcaster TVE reported earlier today.
There had also been speculation that the ship could drop anchor in Gran Canaria.
But the area’s regional government has opposed the plans, with Canary Islands president Fernando Clavijo requesting an urgent meeting with Spain’s Prime Minister to discuss the matter.
Clavijo said today: ‘This decision is not based on any technical criteria, nor is there sufficient information to reassure the public or guarantee their safety.’
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The World Health Organisation (WHO) believes the virus may have spread directly between the affected passengers.
But a top expert said this would be unusual. According to Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, the risk of hantavirus spreading from the outbreak is ‘essentially zero’.
This is because the Andes virus – the variant which is understood to have caused the outbreak – is ‘known very rarely to spread between people with close contact’.
‘It means it is very easy to isolate people who are unwell and to follow quarantine and so on to avoid spread to other people,’ he added.
Around 150 guests and crew, including 23 British nationals, are trapped on the cruise ship, which suffered a suspected rat-related virus outbreak while sailing from Argentina to Cape Verde.
Three passengers have died and more are said to be ill, including a British crew member who is understood to be the ship’s doctor.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said it has been tracing people on a flight between the remote volcanic island of Saint Helena and Johannesburg, South Africa taken by a cruise ship passenger who later died of the disease.
There had been 82 passengers and six crew onboard the April 25 flight, South African-based carrier Airlink told AFP.
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They included a Dutch woman, who had just dropped off the body of her husband – who died aboard the ship on April 11 – and then ‘deteriorated during a flight to Johannesburg’, WHO said in a statement.
She had left the ship in Saint Helena with ‘gastrointestinal symptoms’ on April 24 and died upon arrival at a hospital in Johannesburg, where she tested positive for the hantavirus.
‘Contact tracing for passengers on the flight has been initiated,’ WHO said in a statement.
The family of the couple at the centre of the outbreak said: ‘We cannot yet comprehend that we have to miss them. We want to bring them home in peace and remember them.’
Initially, the Spanish health ministry said everyone aboard the ship would be examined, treated and repatriated to their respective countries following their arrival to the Canary Islands.
All necessary safety measures would be taken, the health ministry said, with medical care and transportation in special facilities and vehicles to avoid contact with the local population and protect health workers.
The vessel run by Dutch Oceanwide Expeditions has been stuck in the Atlantic near Cape Verde in isolation while waiting for permission to approach after the deadly outbreak, which killed three people.
Ann Lane, from Dublin, told the Irish Times that the ‘ship’s doctor and a member of the expedition staff are sick on board.’
She said the doctor, described as a younger British man, had been ‘fabulous’ and ‘treating everybody day and night.’
He had reportedly been sick for ‘quite a few days, maybe since last Thursday,’ Ann said.
Oceanwide Expeditions had initially planned to dock in either Tenerife or Gran Canaria to seek medical treatment for its sick passengers. ‘The medical evacuation of two individuals currently requiring urgent medical care, and the individual associated with the guest who passed away on 2 May, will occur using two specialised aircraft that are en route to Cape Verde,’ it said in a statement released on Tuesday (May 5).
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‘From here, the patients are to be medically evacuated to the Netherlands. At this stage, we do not have an exact timeline.
‘Once these three individuals have been safely transferred from the vessel and are in transit to the Netherlands, the m/v Hondius will begin repositioning.’
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