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Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), published an open letter addressed to the residents of Tenerife this Saturday to alleviate the fears caused by the imminent arrival of the expedition vessel MV Hondius, which has been affected by an outbreak of hantavirus that has resulted in three fatalities among its passengers.
In an unusual gesture for the head of global public health, Tedros acknowledged the fears of the Canary Islands population and directly linked it to the collective trauma of the pandemic. "I know that when you hear the words 'outbreak or epidemic' and see a ship approaching your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully overcome. The pain of 2020 is still real, and I do not minimize it for a moment," he wrote.
However, the official was emphatic in his main message: "This is not another COVID-19. The current public health risk posed by hantavirus remains low."
The virus identified on board is the Andes strain of hantavirus, the only one among more than twenty known strains with documented human-to-human transmission, although the WHO emphasizes that these events are rare. Three passengers have lost their lives, and there are at least six confirmed cases among the nearly 150 occupants of the ship, coming from 23 countries.
The hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius is the first recorded on a cruise ship, as stated by the WHO itself. The vessel, operated by the Dutch company Oceanwide Expeditions, departed from Ushuaia, Argentina, on March 20 on a 46-day itinerary. After Cape Verde refused to allow the ship to dock on May 5, Spain approved a disembarkation plan at the industrial port of Granadilla de Abona, in the southeast of Tenerife.
Tedros explained in detail the planned protocol: passengers will be transferred to land in small boats with a maximum of five people, in sealed and guarded vehicles through a cordoned-off corridor, and repatriated directly to their countries of origin. The 14 Spaniards on board will be flown by military aircraft to Madrid for quarantine at the Gómez-Ulla Hospital. "You will not have contact with them, and neither will their families," assured the director general.
The official also publicly thanked the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, for the decision to welcome the ship. "I described it as an act of solidarity and moral duty. Because that is exactly what it is," he wrote, specifying that the request was made in compliance with the International Health Regulations, the legally binding framework of the WHO.
The decision generated political friction in Spain: the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, publicly opposed the arrival of the ship, while the central Government labeled this stance as "irresponsible." The WHO had already commented on the outbreak days earlier, insisting that the risk to the general population was low.
Tedros also announced that he will personally travel to the island to oversee the operation. "I will be there in person, to stand alongside the healthcare workers, port staff, and officials who are carrying it out," he stated, emphasizing the "exemplary collaboration" of the ship's captain, Jan Dobrogowski, and his crew.
The letter concluded with a phrase the director general has repeated during other health crises: "Viruses do not understand politics or respect borders. The best immunity we have is solidarity."
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