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THE first passengers from the doomed rat virus cruise ship have finally been evacuated after it controversially anchored in Tenerife.
Relieved Spaniards boarded the first small boats from a side door after passing strict health screening on the MV Hondius, followed by evacuees from around the world.
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The Spanish passengers and crew were flown to a hospital in Madrid.
A French plane was the second to take off with five evacuees on board as Canadians were evacuated from the MV Hondius.
Other passengers from the Netherlands, the UK, Turkey, Ireland and the US will follow.
It comes after a daring mission saw army medics parachute onto a remote island territory where a Brit has been struck down with the virus.
Medics were strapped to soldiers as they made the dramatic drop onto Tristan da Cunha, a remote British territory in desperate need of oxygen and other medical supplies.
The MV Hondius ship arrived just after 6am in Tenerife, with public health officials in hazmat suits boarding shortly after.
Asymptomatic passengers and crew are being allowed off in groups of five by nationality and taken to planes waiting to repatriate them.
No one remaining on the ship is showing symptoms of hantavirus, nor have any of the evacuated passengers or crew.
How army medics parachuted onto remote island to help suspected Brit rat virus case
By Jerome Starkey, Defence Editor
DAREDEVIL Army medics have parachuted into the world’s most remote inhabited island to treat a suspected case of hantavirus.
Medics were strapped to soldiers from the elite Pathfinders unit in an historic mission on Saturday.
They leapt into Tristan da Cunha – after 10,000km journey from Britain – as medical supplies including oxygen run dangerously low on the island.
A cruise ship crew member with a suspected British case of hantavirus disembarked the MV Hondius on April 14.
The MoD said the jump “was the only method of getting vital care to the patient in time”.
It is thought to be the first operational jump – apart from secret Special Forces missions – since the Suez crisis in 1956.
The volcanic island is some 2800km from the south west coast of Africa and is normally only accessible by boat.
The suspected case of hantavirus on the island is a local who disembarked the MV Hondius during a visit to the island on April 14.
During the visit, passengers of the rat virus ship mixed with locals, cramming into a local pub and even visiting a school.
It comes as…
- Hantavirus patient zero revealed as bird watcher
- RAF parachutes aid to infected Brit on tiny island
- Rat virus cruise passenger visited a school on infected territory
- The hunt is on for Brit who disembarked with dead passenger
- Brit crew member speaks out from hospital isolation
- Two Brits passengers self-isolating at home in UK
The WHO Director General said: “The operation has started and is going very well. We appreciate the cooperation.”
Some 21 Brits will be flown to Arrowe Park Hospital in Birkenhead, which was also used to isolate potential Covid-19 cases in 2020.
One British person who lives in Australia will be flying with the Australian crew tomorrow.
It will be the last evacuation flight expected to leave Tenerife, also carrying Australian and a New Zealander.
As the ship arrived this morning, a relieved woman wearing a mask was seen at the back of the deck of the boat taking a selfie.
Authorities now face a race against time to get all the passengers and crew off before bad weather hits the island.
Only those not showing symptoms of the rat plague hantavirus will disembark, starting with the Spanish who will fly to a military hospital in Madrid.
The MV Hondius will refuel in Tenerife, pick up supplies in Santa Cruz, then continue on to Rotterdam, trying to avoid the looming storm.
Asymptomatic Brits will go via bus 10 minutes down the road to the Tenerife South airport, where a Titan Airways jet chartered by the foreign office will take them home.
They will fly back to the UK and isolate for 45 days at Arrowe Park hospital in the Wirral, Merseyside – the same hospital used to isolate those returning from China after the Covid outbreak.
Three people from the ship have died after getting the bug, and there have been three other confirmed cases.
It includes British crew member Martin Anstee, who is being treated in a Netherlands hospital after being airlifted from the vessel.
But riot police were on standby all day to intervene after port workers and locals threatened to stop the high-stakes global health operation.
Furious protesters demonstrated outside the Canary Islands parliament on Friday and threatened to blockade the twitcher boat if their health concerns were not met.
Members of the Tenerife Port Workers (TPT) union have rallied against the Spanish government’s decision to allow the Hondius to dock at the port of Granadilla in the island’s south.
TPT union spokesperson Elena Ruiz said: “We are prepared to block the port if we don’t get answers to our concerns.”
Locals also considered blocking the single access road to the port.
Dozens of police including a riot van patrolled the port and the entrance.
A source said: “Authorities have secured the area and are ready to be deployed if they need to be to make sure the process is completed.”
The protests threatened to make the evacuation process even longer, which could ruin the whole operation because of oncoming bad sea conditions.
Disembarking the passengers is likely to be a lengthy process to make sure there is no risk to others on the island.
But local governors claimed the complex operation had a short window of opportunity and could have to be scrapped if it is not completed within 24 hours.
Regional Canary Islands government spokesman Alfonso Cabello warned bad weather meant the “window is very limited”.
He insisted the ship would have to continue with passengers still on board if the evacuation was not completed before the bad sea conditions on Monday – otherwise they would be stuck until the middle of May.
Workers had been toiling since the early hours yesterday to prepare the site for the MV Hondius’ arrival. It included a field hospital being set up with supplies and stretchers.
The World Health Organisation‘s director general meanwhile desperately tried to calm tensions yesterday by telling locals in an open letter he knows they are “worried”, but insisted: “This is not another Covid.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in an open letter to concerned locals: “I know you are worried.
“I know that when you hear the word ‘outbreak’ and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest.
“The pain of 2020 is still real, and I do not dismiss it for a single moment.
“But I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another Covid. The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low.”
He said that Tenerife was chosen “because it has the medical capacity, the infrastructure, and the humanity to help [those on board] reach safety”, adding: “Because I believe that so deeply, I will be there myself.”
And he reiterated in a press conference last night that local concerns were “legitimate”, but added: “We have all experienced Covid. That trauma is still in our minds.
“People will have questions, concerns, that’s what I tried to address in my letter to the people of Tenerife.”
Last night, patient zero was identified as ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, 70, who boarded the ship with his wife Mirjam, 69.
He is believed to have caught the virus from an Argentinian rat after they visited a landfill site on March 27.
The birdwatching hotspot is home to a rare species of Patagonian bird, including the white-bellied seedsnipe.
The couple, from small Netherlands village Haulerwijk, had been on a five-month trip around South America.
Leo was the first patient to die of the virus on board the ship.
The captain announced the horrifying news the next day, but said he believed the passenger died of “natural causes”.
“I am told by the doctor that we are not infectious,” he can be heard saying in footage recorded by Turkish travel vlogger Ruhi Cenet.
Two weeks later, his wife Mirjam got off the ship with his body but died trying to board a plane to the Netherlands from South Africa.
Just one day later, a 69-year-old British man was evacuated with a high fever, shortness of breath and signs of pneumonia.
He is currently being treated in an intensive care unit in Johannesburg.
Health officials tested the stricken Brit for hantavirus after other, extensive tests returned negative.
The diagnosis was officially made on May 2, three weeks after the first passenger died.
That same day, a third passenger – a German woman – died on the ship after suffering symptoms that can be caused by hantavirus, and her body remains on the ship.
Martin Anstee, 56, a British crew member, has also been airlifted to hospital in the Netherlands from the MV Hondius with a suspected hantavirus case.
Two Brits returned home early from the cruise and are isolating in the UK.
A third suspected British hantavirus case on the remote Tristan da Cunha is suspected after a crew member disembarked there on April 14.
The infected MV Hondius anchored near the remote British territory after one passenger had already died of the virus, with crew and passengers coming ashore and mixing with islanders.
MV Hondius passengers and staff crammed into the local pub and even visited a school on the island, which is considered the world’s most remote inhabited island.
The Tristan da Cunha case has sparked a frantic response from the British government, which deployed a specialist army team to airdrop medical personnel and supplies to the territory.
Tristan da Cunha has no airstrip and is normally only accessible by boat. A team of six daring paratroopers and two military medics parachuted from a military plane.
More oxygen and other medical supplies were simultaneously dropped.
The Ministry of Defence said: “With oxygen supplies on the island at a critical level, an airdrop with medical personnel was the only method of getting vital care to the patient in time.”
It added that the operation would “ensure the resilience of wider healthcare on the island by supporting Tristan da Cunha’s two-person medical team”.
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