Most of the passengers of the 'MS Hondius' are already in their countries to spend the isolation there

BarcelonaThis Sunday was the time to test the efforts of the last week to prepare the evacuation of the passengers trapped on the MSHondius and coordinate their return home with an operation that guaranteed health and safety at all times. The cruise ship arrived at dawn off the Canary coast, and the ship's lights were visible from the port of Granadilla before sunrise. At that moment, there were 147 people on board. Some passengers will still spend another night on board awaiting the last repatriation flights, which will be completed this Monday. After these last take-offs, only 30 crew members will remain on the cruise ship, who will be responsible for taking it to the port of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, where the ship's disinfection will be finalized.

As had been agreed in the negotiations of the past few days, the ship did not dock at the port of Tenerife, but it did anchor. From there, the disembarkations of passengers and part of the crew have been taking place, divided into groups according to their nationality - there were people from 23 different countries on board - and only once the plane that was to repatriate them was ready. Before the maneuvers began, a health team confirmed that all passengers and crew members continued to be without any symptoms that could suggest hantavirus infection, although later this same Sunday a French citizen showed symptoms precisely during the repatriation flight.

The first to disembark from the ship were the 14 passengers of Spanish nationality, among whom there are five Catalans, and who are now in quarantine at the Gómez Ulla military hospital in Madrid, where they will undergo PCR tests. Afterwards, the staging of the protocol has been repeated with the other groups of evacuees: from the MSHondius they moved to small boats to reach land, then by bus to Tenerife South Airport and fly each to their country.

This Sunday, flights with Spanish, French, Canadian, Dutch, British, Turkish, Irish, and American passengers have been and will be linked. Repatriations will continue on Monday, when two more flights are scheduled. The first is an Australian plane that will pick up its citizens as well as New Zealanders and a person with a British passport residing in Australia. On Monday, the second plane sent by the Netherlands will be linked from Tenerife, which will pick up passengers who have not been evacuated by their countries.

The Minister of Health, Mónica García, has highlighted the smooth functioning of this "unprecedented operation" to disembark and repatriate the people trapped on the cruise ship. Both the head of Health and the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, have insisted that the operation has been carried out with absolute safety for the island's population. "We are prepared and the WHO knows it," García said about the State's capacity to handle such an operation. The minister also explained that the operation has proceeded without incidents despite the difficulties and opposition encountered. "Not only are we meeting expectations, but we are fulfilling the pride we have in being a country that can take charge," she added.

Five more days of crossing

The ship will return to the Netherlands. Before that, on Monday morning, it will refuel and load the necessary supplies at the port of Granadilla to then undertake a five-day journey to the port of Rotterdam. The shipping company Oceanwide Expeditions explained in a statement this Saturday that these movements will begin once all passengers and some of the crew members who need to be repatriated on the flights scheduled for tomorrow have disembarked. After these procedures, most of the ship's crew will remain on board to sail to the final destination.

While awaiting the tests to be performed on all evacuated passengers from the ship, the confirmed positive cases of hantavirus by the WHO remain at eight and there are none who had not been on board the MSHondius. In Alicante, a woman remains hospitalized since Friday because she had symptoms that could be compatible with an infection, but an initial PCR ruled out that she had been infected and results of a second test to validate the results are expected in the coming hours. The results of the PCR on a Catalan woman who is in isolation at the Hospital Clínico since Saturday will also be known in the coming hours. She went there without symptoms after learning that she had been in the same plane for a few minutes as the Dutch woman who contracted the virus on the cruise and ended up dying.

The ship, which has been the center of attention for days, has been the focus of the hantavirus outbreak that has caused three deaths. Therefore, people who have been on board will have to undergo quarantine to prevent possible contagion. The duration and conditions of this isolation will vary slightly depending on each country's protocol. For example, in the United Kingdom, all passengers evacuated from the cruise have been admitted to Arrowe Park Hospital to spend between 42 and 45 days in quarantine under medical supervision. In France, the five evacuees have been transferred directly to Bichat Hospital in Paris, where they will spend the first 72 hours in quarantine and undergo a complete medical evaluation. After this initial period, they will be in isolation for 45 days under the control of the regional health agencies of their place of residence.