The WHO is accelerating the departure of passengers from the cruise ship and recommends a 42-day quarantine

The operation to evacuate the passengers of the ‘MV Hondius’ will resume this Monday, with the aim of completing the repatriation before 7:00 p.m. The World Health Organization ( WHO ) has set the goal of having 
all passengers and most of the crew leave the ship on two new flights scheduled from Tenerife.

Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO’s director of pandemic preparedness and prevention, explained that a plane from Australia and another from the Netherlands , the country under whose flag the cruise ship sails, will arrive to pick up passengers whose governments have not yet sent transport. Before beginning this operation, the ship will refuel and resupply in the port of Tenerife.

Afterwards, the ‘MV Hondius’ will set sail for the Netherlands with 30 crew members on board, out of the 61 who departed from Cape Verde. All of them will be accompanied by a medical professional.

The cruise ship departed last Thursday from Cape Verde bound for the Canary Islands after the WHO recommended that it disembark in the Spanish archipelago for safety reasons.

42-DAY QUARANTINE

The WHO recommends that passengers on the ship undergo a 42-day quarantine. This is because the Andes strain of hantavirus detected on the ‘MV Hondius’ has an incubation period twice as long as that of other known viruses.

“Our recommendations for passengers and crew on board are that they undergo active monitoring and follow-up, which means daily health checks, either at home or in a specialized facility. We leave it to each country to develop its own policies, but our recommendations are very clear,” Van Kerkove explains.