Three suspected hantavirus cases aboard a stricken cruise ship off Cape Verde will be evacuated shortly via the west African island nation, the World Health Organization told AFP on Tuesday.
Once the two symptomatic hantavirus sufferers and a close contact with no symptoms have been successfully evacuated, the MV Hondius “can continue its route”, either to Spain’s Canary Islands or the Netherlands, the UN health agency’s Cape Verde representative, Ann Lindstrand, told AFP.
The ship has been at the centre of an international health scare since Saturday after it was revealed that the rare disease — spread from infected rodents typically through urine, droppings and saliva — was suspected of being behind the deaths of three of its passengers.
According to Lindstrand, an ambulance will take the suspected infected trio from the port in the Cape Verdean capital, Praia, to the nearby airport, from which they will be evacuated by plane.
While the situation was “changing by the hour”, Lindstrand said that once that “complicated expedition” had been carried out, “what I know now is that the boat will be able to leave sometime in the middle of the night”.
Although “the initial plan was for the boat to leave from here to the Canary Islands to the Tenerife port”, the Dutch-operated cruise ship could end up back in the Netherlands instead, she said.
“There has been discussions during the day today that the boat might be sent all the way to the Netherlands,” Lindstrand said.
“So we’re still waiting, but either or we think Canary Islands or Holland.”
The official said that the conditions of the two crew members with hantavirus symptoms were not getting worse.
“Luckily, the situation for these two symptomatic patients is stable, and it has been stable as well the last couple of days,” she said.
On the third case to be evacuated, the health official said that they were “now in very good health, asymptomatic and in good shape”.
“However, that person had a slight fever two days ago,” Linstrand said, explaining that officials considered it “more safe to medically evacuate that third person as well”.
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