The cruise ship MV Hondius (Oceanwide Expeditions) which has been trying to find a port following an outbreak of Hantavirus, will be permitted by Spain to transfer passengers at the island of Tenerife.   There are 17 Americans on board who will be transferred by the CDC from Tenerife to the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.  Once there, they will remain in isolation for 42-days under observation.

(VIA CBS) – World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived in Tenerife Saturday to personally oversee the painstaking process of evacuating more than 100 people from a cruise ship dealing with an outbreak of the rare and deadly hantavirus.

Addressing the people of the Canary Islands, where the ship will anchor off the coast of its largest island, the WHO chief said the public’s concern is legitimate after what the world experienced in 2020 during the global coronavirus pandemic.

“This disease is not COVID,” Tedros said, reiterating a letter he wrote earlier Saturday. “The risk to the local population is low.”

Tedros said that the nature of the hantavirus is not the same as the coronavirus, but “that trauma is still in our minds.”

“That’s why also I came here,” he said. “To be on the side of the people because saying things from far could be easy. But I had to change my plans to come here because this is very, very important to the whole world and to the people of Tenerife as well.”

Eight people on the cruise ship had confirmed or suspected cases of the hantavirus and three people have died, the WHO said on Friday. None of the 147 people currently on board, including 60 crew members, are symptomatic, according to Oceanwide Expeditions, which owns the vessel.

Tedros estimated Saturday that there will be six evacuation flights headed for the EU and four for non-EU countries.

There are 17 Americans on the MV Hondius, according to Oceanwide Expeditions, who will be taken off the ship in a small boat, taken to shore and immediately to a plane on the runway waiting for them. The plane, provided by the U.S. government with oversight from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will take the Americans to the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, according to the CDC.

“I’m sure they’re very anxious to get home, but (we need) to make sure they do that in the most safe way possible,” Maria van Kerkhove, WHO’s acting director of the Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention, said at a press conference on Saturday.

Each country with passengers on board the ship will proceed with a similar evacuation to awaiting planes, according to the Spanish Health Ministry.

The WHO said it was recommending each country keep the passengers removed from the ship in isolation for 42 days from the last point of exposure to the virus. (Read More)

Just another reason to avoid cruise ships.