TENERIFE, Canary Islands (AP) — The first passengers to be evacuated from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship now anchored off Spain's Canary Islands arrived Sunday afternoon in Madrid, where they were being taken to a military hospital. Soon after, a French evacuation plane landed in Paris, where it was met by emergency vehicles that whisked passengers to hospitals.
Spanish nationals were the first to leave the MV Hondius, which reached Tenerife, the largest island in the Spanish archipelago off West Africa's coast, early Sunday.
A plane carrying Canadian nationals also left Tenerife after the Spanish plane. A Dutch plane was due to depart with Germans, Belgians and Greeks, while an American plane was expected to reach Tenerife around 5:30 p.m. local time (1630 GMT), according to FlightRadar 24, which shows live aircraft flight tracking details.
Maria van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization's top epidemiologist, said that a number of other flights were expected to arrive Sunday, including ones to repatriate passengers to Turkey, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
None of the more than 140 people on the Hondius has shown symptoms of the virus, officials from Spain's health ministry, WHO and cruise company Oceanwide Expeditions said.
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 personnel working at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife wore protective gear during the evacuation process, including face masks, hazmat suits and respirators. Video obtained by The Associated Press showed passengers on the tarmac donning similar suits and being sprayed down with disinfectant.
Passengers were relieved to be on their way to their home countries, 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.
Passengers and some crew members from more than 20 nationalities on board will be evacuated throughout Sunday into Monday.
After reaching Madrid, those evacuated on the first plane will be under quarantine, Spanish health authorities say. Only the 14 Spanish nationals on board will quarantine in the country.
Authorities have said the passengers and crew members disembarking will be checked for symptoms, have no contact with the local population and will only be taken off the ship once evacuation flights are ready to fly them to their destinations. Tedros and Spain’s health and interior ministers are supervising the operation in Tenerife.
Pope Leo XIV on Sunday thanked the Canary Islands for allowing the arrival of the Hondius.
Hantavirus usually spreads when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings and isn’t 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.
Three people have died since the outbreak, and five passengers who left the ship are infected with hantavirus, which can cause life-threatening illness.
Passengers and crew members disembarking are leaving behind their luggage, and are allowed to take only a small bag with essential items, 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 expected sailing time to Rotterdam is around five days, the cruise company said.
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,” Van Kerkhove said.
“We are leaving this up to the countries themselves to actually develop their own policies,” she added. “But our recommendations are very clear, and this is really a cautionary approach to make sure that we don’t have any opportunities for this virus to pass from others.”
Twenty-nine people will be on board the Dutch charter flight, including Dutch nationals and people of other nationalities, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said.
The five French passengers being repatriated Sunday will be hospitalized for 72 hours for monitoring, after which they will quarantine at home for 45 days, France's Foreign Ministry said.
Americans on board will be quarantined at a medical center in Nebraska. U.K. passengers and crew will be hospitalized for observation once they are flown home, British authorities say.
Australia is sending a plane, expected to arrive on Monday, to evacuate its nationals and those from nearby countries such as New Zealand and unspecified Asian countries, Spanish Health Minister Mónica García said. Its plane will be the last to leave Tenerife, she said.
Norway has sent an ambulance plane to Tenerife with personnel trained to transport patients with high-risk infections, its Directorate for Civil Protection told public broadcaster NRK.
British Army medics have 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 says 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 boat on a six-day voyage from Cape Town, South Africa.
Meanwhile, a Spanish woman in the southeastern province of Alicante suspected of being infected tested negative for hantavirus, Spanish health authorities said Saturday.
The woman was a passenger on the same flight as the Dutch woman who died in Johannesburg after traveling on the cruise ship.
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Suman Naishadham reported from Madrid. Associated Press writers Angela Charlton in Paris, Jill Lawless in London, and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, contributed to this report.
