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Spanish authorities on Friday were preparing to welcome more than 140 passengers and crew from a hantavirus-hit ship bound for the Canary Islands, where health officials said they would carefully evacuate people.
The ship is expected to reach the Spanish island of Tenerife, off the coast of West Africa, on Saturday or Sunday.
“They will arrive in an isolated, closed area,” said Virginia Barcones, Spain's head of emergency services, on Thursday.
Spain is working with the government whose citizens are on board about evacuation plans, Barcones said.
The United States agreed to send a plane to the Canary Islands to bring back 17 of its citizens from the ship, he said. The British government also said it would hire a plane to evacuate the nearly two dozen British citizens still on board the MV Hondius.
At least three passengers have died, and many others are sick. The World Health Organization says the risk to the wider community from an outbreak of the disease is low.
The WHO says the hantavirus outbreak is serious but unlikely to spark a new pandemic, despite confirmation of human-to-human transmission and an international tracing effort.
Hantavirus is usually spread by inhaling contaminated rat droppings and is not easily transmitted between people. Symptoms usually appear between one and eight weeks after exposure.
None of the passengers or crew left on the ship have symptoms, Netherlands-based shipping company Oceanwide Expeditions said on Thursday.
Health authorities on all four continents were continuing to track and monitor passengers who disembarked before the deadly disease was discovered, and are trying to trace others who may have come into contact with them since then.
Canadians separated themselves from Ontario and Quebec
In Canada, three people linked to the virus are in home isolation in Ontario and Quebec, the federal government said Thursday as diplomatic officials headed to the Canary Islands to meet the four Canadians still on the boat.
Two Canadian sailors landed on a remote island in the South Atlantic, St. Helena about two weeks ago, according to Dutch Oceanwide Expeditions. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said they were on the same return flight as the third Canadian who was not on board.
Quebec's health minister said a third Canadian, from Quebec, is self-isolating because they may have come into contact with a person infected with the hantavirus during international travel.
Britain's 3rd nation to be infected
On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger died on the ship, more than a dozen people from at least 12 countries left the ship without a trace, the ship's operator and Dutch officials said Thursday.
On Friday, UK health authorities said a third British person was suspected of having the hantavirus.
The UK Health Security Agency said the suspected case was in Tristan da Cunha, the remote British overseas territory in the south Atlantic where the ship docked in April.
There was no word on their condition.
Two other British people on board have been confirmed to have the virus. One is hospitalized in the Netherlands and the other in South Africa.
South African authorities are also trying to get in touch with any passengers who disembarked earlier. They focused on the April 25 flight from St. Helena goes to Johannesburg, the day after the passengers disembarked there.
