Hantavirus-hit ship's captain praises passengers and crew as evacuations conclude

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Spain, May 11 - The captain of the MV Hondius cruise ship that was hit by an outbreak of the hantavirus praised passengers and crew on Monday for their patience, discipline and kindness as the remaining 28 people waited to disembark the ship at anchor in Tenerife.

Captain Jan Dobrogowski, from the Netherlands, said in a video posted on Oceanwide Expeditions' website that the past weeks had been "extremely challenging", adding:

"I could not imagine sailing through these circumstances with a better group of people, guests and crew alike."

The final passengers were waiting to be taken off the MV Hondius, a polar expedition ship, in small boats for transfer onto the Spanish island of Tenerife. They were due to fly later on Monday to the Netherlands to spend time in quarantine.

The MV Hondius was also due to proceed later, with 26 crew members, to the Netherlands - its flag state - where it would be disinfected, health authorities said.

It caps a complex operation that has so far resulted in 94 people being evacuated and repatriated to their countries of residence, 41 days after the MV Hondius set off from southern Argentina and nine days after the first positive test result for the respiratory viral infection.

Three people have died since the start of the outbreak - a Dutch couple and a German national.

The World Health Organisation said on Monday there were now nine reported cases, of which seven had been confirmed as Andes virus, a type of hantavirus.

FALSE POSITIVE?

Two more people have been reported as testing positive for hantavirus since the ship docked in the Canary Islands on Sunday.

A French passenger tested positive and her condition is deteriorating, French Health Minister Stephanie Rist said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said one of the 17 Americans being repatriated had tested mildly positive for the Andes virus, while a second had shown mild symptoms.

As the MV Hondius approached the Canary Islands late last week - amid protests from the regional government about the risk of the virus spreading - Spain's health minister and the WHO had said all passengers were "asymptomatic".

On Monday authorities faced questions about the recent positive cases and a suggestion that U.S. passengers had been ill onboard.

In a statement, the Spanish health ministry queried the U.S. positive test determination, saying an epidemiologist from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control had tested the American passenger onboard the ship since they had been in close contact with a confirmed case.

"A diagnostic test was performed and sent to two laboratories; in one of them, the result was considered by U.S. authorities to be a weak positive, although for us it was inconclusive," the ministry said.

The second American passenger had a "mild cough" that medics onboard felt was unlikely to be hantavirus, it added, while the French passenger only exhibited a fever once she boarded the plane.

Spain's health ministry said no blanket PCR testing had been conducted on the ship because it lacked both the technical capacity and an epidemiological reason to do so.

Results of tests on 14 Spanish passengers currently quarantining at a military hospital in Madrid are due later on Monday, it added.

'THIS IS NOT COVID'

The MV Hondius had been carrying 147 passengers and crew from 23 countries when a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses among passengers was first reported to the WHO on May 3.

By then, 34 other passengers had disembarked on islands in the Atlantic before the cruise ship headed north to Cape Verde, where news of the outbreak emerged.

The virus is usually spread by wild rodents but also transmittable person-to-person in rare cases of close contact. It was first detected by health officials in Johannesburg on May 2 treating a British man who disembarked the ship. That was some three weeks after the first passenger, a Dutchman, had died.

The luxury cruise ship left for Spain's Canary Islands on May 6 after Madrid had accepted a WHO request to manage its evacuation.

The WHO has recommended a 42-day quarantine for all passengers, its director of epidemic and pandemic management, Maria Van Kerkhove, told a briefing.

Health officials have urged calm, reminding a public scarred from the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic that this virus poses little risk to the general population.

On Monday, the head of the Italian pharmaceutical lobby, Marcello Cattani, told a conference in Milan there was little need to develop a hantavirus vaccine.

"Only a small number of citizens, fortunately, are involved," he said. "The path to achieving a vaccine is absolutely feasible, but we are confident there will be no need for one because it will not go from an outbreak to an epidemic or a pandemic." REUTERS