Officials sought to reassure the public in the Canary Islands about possible exposure to the virus among the general population.
Once the ship reaches Tenerife, passengers will be evacuated in small boats to buses only after their repatriation flights are ready to take them, Spanish officials said Friday. Passengers will be transported in isolated and guarded vehicles, officials said, adding that the parts of the airport they travel through will be cordoned off.
COUNTRIES PREPARE TO TRACK PASSENGERS
On Apr 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, Dutch officials and the ship’s operator said Thursday.
It wasn’t until May 2 that health authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a ship passenger, the WHO said.
The KLM flight attendant who tested negative for the virus was working on a flight headed from Johannesburg to Amsterdam on Apr 25, and had later fallen ill.
The cruise passenger who was briefly aboard that flight – a Dutch woman whose husband died on the ship – was too ill to stay on the international flight to Europe and was taken off the plane in Johannesburg, where she died.
The Dutch public health service is undertaking contact tracing on passengers who had contact with the ill woman before she left the plane.