Cruise ship passengers return home, WHO recommends quarantine

The captain of the cruise ship MV "Hondius", which has been hit by a hantavirus outbreak, praised passengers and crew today for their patience, discipline and kindness, while the remaining 28 people waited to disembark from the ship anchored in Tenerife.

The World Health Organization said on Monday that nine cases have now been reported, seven of which have been confirmed as the Andean strain of hantavirus.

New tests have shown that a French woman and an American have tested positive for the virus, while countries around the world are busy repatriating cruise ship passengers.

Passengers from the ship began returning home on Sunday on military and government planes after the MV Hondius docked in the Canary Islands. Personnel wearing full-body suits and breathing masks escorted the passengers from the ship to the shore in Tenerife, in an operation that continued today.

According to Maria van Kerkhove, WHO's director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness, this is the first outbreak of the rare hantavirus ever recorded on a cruise ship. So far, three passengers from the cruise ship have died.

The ship's captain, Jan Dobrogovski, released a video message today in which he praised the passengers and crew for their perseverance and called for their privacy to be respected.

“I have witnessed your care, unity and quiet strength among everyone on board - both guests and crew - and I must commend my crew for the courage and selfless determination they have shown time and again in the most difficult of times,” he said. “I could not imagine sailing through these circumstances with a better group of people, both guests and crew.”

A French woman who tested positive for hantavirus deteriorated overnight in hospital, French Health Minister Stéphanie Rist said on Sunday. The woman was among five French passengers repatriated on Sunday. She developed symptoms on a flight to Paris, Rist told public radio France-Inter.

One of the 17 American passengers evacuated from the ship and flown to Nebraska also tested positive for hantavirus but is showing no symptoms, while the other had mild symptoms, U.S. health officials said late Sunday. The plane landed early Monday morning, and the passengers were transferred to waiting buses and driven from the airport.

The Americans will first be taken to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, which has a quarantine facility, to assess whether they have been in close contact with people with symptoms and their risk of spreading the virus.

Reuters reports that the WHO recommends a 42-day quarantine for all travelers, and health officials have urged calm, reminding the public that this virus poses a low risk to the general population.

The WHO recommends that travelers' home countries "conduct active monitoring and surveillance, which means daily health checks, either at home or in a specialized facility," Van Kerkhove said.

A number of countries have announced that their citizens will be quarantined or hospitalized for observation.

The head of the Italian pharmaceutical lobby, Marcello Cattani, said today at a conference in Milan that there is no great need to develop a vaccine against hantavirus.

"Fortunately, only a small number of citizens have been affected," he said. "The path to getting a vaccine is absolutely feasible, but we are confident that there will be no need for one, because this will not develop from a hotspot into an epidemic or a pandemic."

Planes arriving in Tenerife were due to carry passengers from more than 20 countries as part of an evacuation that is due to be completed today.

The Hondius set sail from the southern Argentine port of Ushuaia on April 1, and a Dutch passenger died on board on April 11. It was not until early May that the WHO announced it was responding to a suspected hantavirus outbreak on the ship, which had been docked off the West African island nation of Cape Verde.