MADRID (AFP) – Spain said Tuesday it will not decide where to let a cruise ship with hantavirus cases dock until epidemiological data had been analysed.
“Based on the epidemiological data collected from the ship during its stopover in Cape Verde, it will be decided which port of call is most appropriate. Until then, the Ministry of Health will not take any decision, as we have informed the World Health Organisation,” the health ministry said in a social media post.
Passengers and crew desperately hunkered down in isolation on a ship stuck off Cape Verde on Monday, after local authorities barred it from docking following the death of three people in a suspected hantavirus outbreak.
The island nation’s refusal to allow them to disembark came even as WHO Europe said the risk to the wider public remained low.
Passengers from Britain, Spain and the United States, as well as crew from the Philippines, were among the 23 nationalities aboard the MV Hondius, which was carrying 149 people.
Those on board are under “strict precautionary measures,” the ship’s operator Oceanwide Expeditions said in a statement, including isolation, hygiene protocols and medical monitoring.
The company has confirmed three deaths among those on the cruise, which was traveling from Ushuaia in Argentina to Cape Verde off the coast of west Africa.
A British passenger was in intensive care in Johannesburg and two crew members — one British and the other Dutch — required “urgent medical care,” the company said.
“At the present time, there are no other symptomatic people on the ship but this is being carefully monitored,” added the WHO’s epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director, Maria Van Kerkhove.
“Passengers are being asked to stay in their cabins and limit their risk while disinfection and other measures are being taken,” she said in a video.
Visibly shaken in what appears to be his cabin, Jake Rosmarin, a passenger who posted regularly about the trip before the health crisis, said that those on board desperately wanted to leave.
“What is happening right now is very real for all of us here,” he said on Instagram.
“There is a lot of uncertainty and that’s the hardest part. All we want right now is to feel safe, to have clarity and to get home.”
Hantavirus, a disease usually transmitted to humans from rodents, has been confirmed in the passenger currently in intensive care in Johannesburg, the operator said.
However, it has not yet been established whether the virus caused the three deaths, it added.
