Spanish authorities on Friday were preparing to receive more than 140 passengers and crew members from the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius, which is expected to reach the Canary Island of Tenerife on Saturday or Sunday after a three- to four-day run north from Cape Verde. Virginia Barcones, Spain's head of emergency services, said the ship would be met at a sealed-off area of port and that the United States had agreed to send a plane to repatriate its 17 citizens, while the British government will charter a flight for the nearly two dozen Britons on board.
The weekend arrival turns a slow-moving Atlantic outbreak into a logistical test for Spain and at least 11 other countries tracking citizens who left the Dutch-flagged vessel before hantavirus was confirmed on May 2. Monday's JSJ reported the World Health Organization had logged three deaths and a handful of suspected cases as the ship sat off Cape Verde; in the days since, eight cases have been confirmed or suspected, the strain has been identified as the human-transmissible Andes virus, and contact tracing has spread to four continents.
What is new today
The U.K. Health Security Agency said Friday it is assessing a third suspected British case, this one on Tristan da Cunha, the remote South Atlantic territory where the ship called in April. Two earlier British cases are confirmed, one hospitalized in the Netherlands and one in South Africa. Singapore has isolated and is testing two residents who were on board, Al Jazeera reported, and France's health ministry has identified eight French nationals who shared a flight with the Dutch woman who died in South Africa, one of whom is showing mild symptoms.
In the United States, five states are monitoring passengers who left the ship before any cases were confirmed: two each in Georgia and Texas, one each in Arizona and Virginia, and an unspecified number in California, according to their state health departments. None is symptomatic. Dr. Joel Terriquez, medical director of infectious disease and prevention for Northern Arizona Healthcare, said there is a "low risk" to the public and no certainty the monitored passenger was exposed.
At the dock
The arrival plan has drawn local pushback. José Domingo Regalado, mayor of the Tenerife seaside community of Granadilla de Abona, said in a video statement Wednesday, "I want to express my deep rejection of the arrival of the ship Hondius at the port of Granadilla," calling the decision to bring passengers ashore "no common sense." Canarias President Fernando Clavijo on Thursday said the ship would be allowed to anchor off the islands but not dock. Barcones told reporters Thursday, "They will arrive at a completely isolated, cordoned-off area."
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the agency has been "coordinating with domestic and international partners" since learning of the outbreak. President Trump told reporters Thursday night, "It's very much, we hope, under control." Asked whether Americans should worry about spread, Trump said, "I hope not," Al Jazeera reported.
The science
The Andes strain, found primarily in Argentina and Chile, is the only hantavirus known to pass between people, typically through prolonged close contact among household members, intimate partners or caregivers. Symptoms can take one to eight weeks to appear. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, told reporters Thursday more cases could still emerge given the incubation window.
A single-bucket file
The sources available for today's update were uniformly center-left wire and broadcast outlets; body-tier center and right-leaning desks had not yet published Friday-dated coverage of the Spain handover, the Tristan da Cunha case or the Singapore tests. The WHO continues to assess the global risk as low, and Van Kerkhove told reporters, "This is not coronavirus, this is a very different virus," adding, "This is not the same situation we were in six years ago."
The Hondius is due to anchor off Tenerife by Sunday, when the first repatriation flights are expected to begin.