Australia is set to quarantine half a dozen passengers from the Dutch-flagged luxury cruise ship at the centre of the hantavirus outbreak, as carefully managed evacuations begin. The government has declared the measures a "precautionary approach" to keep the community safe following the arrival of five Australians and one New Zealander in Perth on Monday.
Evacuation and Quarantine Details
Passengers were being evacuated from MV Hondius after the luxury cruise ship arrived at the Port of Granadilla near the Spanish island of Tenerife on Sunday carrying 147 people. At least three deaths on the ship have been linked to hantavirus, a rare disease spread by contact with rodents or their urine, saliva or droppings. Of the eight people linked to the ship who have fallen sick, six have been confirmed for hantavirus.
Australian health minister Mark Butler said the government was enacting "national quarantine arrangements" to take control of states for quarantine and return arrangements. Upon their touchdown in Perth, Western Australia, the passengers will be quarantined at the Bullsbrook facility near their force base Pearce.
"I want to stress that our primary responsibility as a government, obviously, is to keep our community safe and healthy," he said. "We also have a responsibility to those passengers, to bring them home and to protect them from any risk, no matter how small, of potentially transmitting the virus without knowing it."
Mr Butler said none of the Australians had displayed symptoms of hantavirus at this stage. "A distinguishing factor for Australia, though, is that these passengers will have to come home on quite a long flight from Tenerife, unlike travelling just to the UK, for example, probably in a relatively small plane with a higher risk of transmission during transit," he said. But he said there was a possibility of quarantine extending beyond three weeks due to the incubation period of 42 days for this virus.
After the passengers return, they will be transferred to the centre and subjected to testing, and the samples will be sent to the Doherty Institute in Melbourne for analysis.
Global Response and Comparisons
With the outbreak being compared to the Covid pandemic, Mr Butler said while the virus did not have "pandemic potential", it remained a serious situation. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the danger of the outbreak was low as this was not like a coronavirus outbreak. "We have been repeating the same answer many times," he said. "This is not another Covid. And the risk to the public is low. So they shouldn't be scared, and they shouldn't panic."
Several countries, including the US, Spain, France, Canada, Ireland and the Netherlands, have begun the evacuation process from the ship. The UK has brought back 20 British passengers, who were tested for hantavirus before getting on the flight and taken to the UK's initial Covid quarantine site at Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral, Merseyside.
The US has evacuated 17 American passengers. One of them has tested positive for hantavirus, while a second is showing mild symptoms, the Department of Health and Human Services said. French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu said one of the five French nationals repatriated from Tenerife showed symptoms of hantavirus during the flight back to France. "As a result, these five passengers were immediately placed in strict isolation until further notice," Lecornu said in a post on X.
