Spain has begun the evacuation process of passengers from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship anchored near Tenerife on Sunday, with health officials boarding the boat to conduct a final check and begin disembarking passengers, Spain's health ministry said.
The first group of passengers, who are Spanish nationals, will be taken back to shore on small boats and immediately transferred into sealed buses to the local airport, where they will fly back to Madrid on a Spanish government plane, government officials said, emphasising they will have no contact with members of the public.
The cruise ship arrived in Spain's Canary Islands on Sunday, where most of the nearly 150 people on board will be evacuated and flown home after weeks at sea.
The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius arrived at the Spanish port of Granadilla escorted by a Civil Guard vessel, journalists reported, confirmed by data from the maritime tracking service VesselFinder.
Passengers and some of the crew are expected to evacuate before the ship, where an outbreak of hantavirus led to the deaths of three people, continues on its way to the Netherlands.
Three passengers from the ship, a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman, have died, while others have fallen sick with the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents.
The only hantavirus type that can transmit from person to person, the Andes virus, has been confirmed among those who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.
"We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact," WHO's epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director Maria Van Kerkhove said on Saturday.
But the risk to the general public and the people of the Canaries remained low, she added.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who arrived in Spain on Saturday and is expected to oversee the ship evacuation, gave the same assurance and thanked the people of Tenerife for their solidarity.
"I need you to hear me clearly," Tedros wrote in an open letter to the people of Tenerife on Saturday: "This is not another Covid."
After arriving in Tenerife, he said he was confident the operation would be a success. "Spain is ready and prepared," he told reporters.
Daily life uninterrupted
At the port of Granadilla de Abona early Sunday morning, journalists saw that white tents had been set up along the quay and the police had secured part of the port.
Despite the situation, daily life appeared largely normal: some people were swimming, others shopping at the market or sitting at cafe terraces.
"There are worries there could be a danger, but honestly, I don't see people being very concerned," said David Parada, a lottery vendor.
Regional authorities have refused to allow the vessel to dock. Instead, it will remain offshore while passengers are screened and evacuated between Sunday and Monday, the only window health officials say the weather will allow.
Cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions said earlier that "all guests and a limited number of crew members" were expected to begin to leave the ship from around 0700 GMT.
"Once disembarked, they will be transferred immediately to their allocated aircraft," the Dutch firm said.
The WHO said on Friday it had confirmed six cases out of eight suspected ones. There are no suspected cases remaining on the ship.
The MV Hondius is sailing from Cape Verde, where three infected people had already been evacuated earlier in the week.
In Madrid, Spain's health and interior ministers insisted there would be "no contact" with the local population, and that passengers would leave "by nationality groups".
"All areas (the passengers) pass through will be sealed off," the interior minister said, adding a maritime exclusion zone would be in force around the vessel.
The MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 for a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Verde.
