Passengers stuck for days on the virus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius have started landing back in their home countries.
Guests disembarked in Tenerife under tight health restrictions and boarded government-organized repatriation flights home.
Last evacuation flights to depart Monday
Flights have landed in France, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK with American and Canadian nationals arriving home Sunday. Additional flights are expected to depart from Tenerife on Monday.
French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said one of the five French passengers on an evacuation flight displayed symptoms of hantavirus. All five were placed into strict isolation upon landing.
The World Health Organization recommended a 42-day quarantine for all ship guests. “Our recommendation is daily health checks, at home or in a specialized facility. It’s up to countries to develop their policies but our recommendations are very clear,” said the WHO’s acting director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, Maria Van Kerkhove.
Ship guests will self-isolate for several weeks
Countries have set their own quarantine and self-isolating rules. Spain will keep its citizens in hospital for the full 42 days, while French guests will be monitored in hospital for the first 72 hours and then permitted to self-isolate at home for 45 more days.
All 17 Americans who sailed on the ship were flown to the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha for an initial health assessment.
After evaluation, passengers without confirmed infection are expected to transition to home-based monitoring, with local health departments checking in daily for up to 42 days.
“This is not Covid. We don’t want to cause a public panic over this,” said acting U.S. CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya. “We don’t want to treat it like COVID. We want to treat it with the hantavirus protocols that were successful in containing outbreaks in the past.”
The hantavirus, which has claimed three lives with another six cases under medical evaluation, was first reported to the WHO in early May and is generally transmitted through contact with infected rodent droppings, urine or saliva. Spanish health officials said no rodents were discovered on the ship.
Health officials now suspect the Dutch couple who died may have contracted hantavirus during a birdwatching trip through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay before the cruise departed Ushuaia, as the route included stops in areas where the rodent species known to carry the virus is present.
