All passengers on hantavirus-hit cruise ship considered ‘high-risk’ contacts: WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Saturday classified everyone aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius as “high-risk” contacts following a deadly hantavirus outbreak that has already claimed three lives and triggered an international public health response.

The Dutch-flagged vessel, carrying nearly 150 passengers and crew, is expected to reach waters near Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday as authorities prepare a closely coordinated evacuation and monitoring operation.

Speaking during a social media briefing, WHO epidemic and pandemic preparedness director Maria Van Kerkhove said all individuals on board would require active health surveillance for 42 days because of potential exposure to the virus.

“We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact,” she said.

Currently, "there's nobody on board that has any symptoms", she said, adding though that "active monitoring and follow-up of all the passengers and crew who disembark for a 42-day period" was recommended.

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Van Kerkove stressed that the risk to the general public and to the people of the Canary Islands, where the Hondius is expected to anchor on Sunday, remained "low".

Three passengers from the ship -- a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman -- have died, out of eight confirmed and suspected cases of 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 the six cases who have tested positive, fuelling international concern.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is heading to Tenerife to help coordinate the evacuation.

Van Kerkhove said the United Nations health agency was coordinating with member states -- in particular Spain and the Netherlands, the ship's operator, and experts around the world on the best way forward.

On Saturday, WHO had briefed countries with nationals on board the ship about the plans for "safe and dignified disembarkment", she said.

The idea, she said, was for anyone who might be showing symptoms to "immediately go to a medical evacuation plane and be taken to the Netherlands for care".

Countries were organising planes to take all those without symptoms back home, with some countries, like the United States and Canada, discussing sharing a plane, Van Kerkhove said.

Everyone coming off the ship would meanwhile need to be monitored for 42 days, starting from their last point of exposure with a confirmed or suspected hantavirus case, she said.

That means, she said, "the clock has already started ticking".

UK health authorities said on Saturday that British passengers and staff on the cruise ship hit by a hantavirus outbreak will be taken to a hospital in northwest England for an initial isolation period once they are repatriated.

The ship, the MV Hondius, is expected to anchor off the Spanish island of Tenerife early on Sunday, following which the 22 British nationals on board will be flown back to Britain.