WHO director arrives in Canary Islands to oversee hantavirus travel: “This disease is not COVID”

The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived in Tenerife on Saturday to personally observe the difficult process of evacuating more than 100 people from the ship. to deal with outbreaks of a rare and deadly hantavirus.

Speaking to the people of the Canary Islands, where the ship will dock on the coast of the largest island, the WHO official said that public concern is legitimate after what happened in the world in 2020 during the global violence of the coronavirus.

“This disease is not COVID,” Tedros said, repeating a letter he wrote earlier Saturday. “The risk to local people is minimal.”

Tedros said the hantavirus strain is not the same as the coronavirus, but “that trauma is still on our minds.”

“That’s why I came here,” he said. “Being on the side of the people because saying things from a distance would be easy. But I had to change my plans to come here because this is very important to the world and to the people of Tenerife.”

The Dutch-flagged vessel MV Hondius is expected to arrive on the island of Tenerife early Sunday, officials said.

There were eight people on board confirmed or suspected cases of hantavirus and three people died, WHO said on Friday. None of the 147 people currently on board, including 60 crew members, have any identification, according to Oceanwide Expeditions, which owns the ship.

Tedros estimated on Saturday that there would be six exit flights to the EU and four to non-EU countries.

There are 17 Americans aboard the MV Hondius, according to Oceanwide Expeditions, who will be taken off the ship in a small boat, taken ashore and immediately flown to a waiting runway. The plane, provided by the US government under the supervision of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will take Americans to the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, according to the CDC.

“I’m sure they’re very worried about coming home, but (we need) to make sure they do that in the safest way possible,” said Maria van Kerkhove, WHO’s acting director of the Department of Epidemiology and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention, speaking to the media on Saturday.

Each country with passengers on board will continue to carry out similar evacuations on waiting flights, according to the Spanish Ministry of Health.

The WHO said it recommends each country that passengers are removed from the ship in isolation for 42 days from the last place of exposure to the virus.

This disease is usually contracted through close contact with rodents, and is not contagious from person to person. However, tests of those who were sick in Hondius have confirmed that they have the Andes virus, the only strain that can be spread by close contact with a sick person.

However, health experts say the chances of mass infection are very low.

“I know that when you hear the word ‘outbreak’ and watch the ship sail towards your shore, memories arise that none of us have fully recovered from,” Tedros said in a letter to the people of the Canary Islands early Saturday. “The pain of 2020 is still real, and I’m not dismissing it at all. But I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another COVID.”

“The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low,” he continued. “My partner and I said it in no uncertain terms, I will tell you again now.”

The ship left Argentina on April 1 to stop at several remote islands in the south Atlantic, including Tristan da Cunha and Saint Helena, both British territories.

The outbreak appears to have started with a Dutch couple who circumnavigated South America, the only place where the Andes species exists, in the months leading up to the cruise. The couple spent time bird watching in areas where rodents are known to have tested positive for hantavirus, according to Oceanwide Expeditions.

The husband died on the ship on April 11, and his wife was one of 32 people who went off the ship in Saint Helena, according to Oceanwide Expeditions. He was due to fly to South Africa and died days later when he was removed from a KLM Airlines flight because he was too ill to fly, according to the airline.

A number of people on the plane or landing in Saint Helena have already been monitored around the world, including in the U.S. None of the people in the US – Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, New Jersey and California – have experienced any symptoms of the virus, state health departments confirmed to CBS News.