Geneva: The World Health Organisation said Saturday it considers everyone on board a cruise ship hit with a deadly hantavirus outbreak as "high-risk" contacts who should be actively monitored for 42 days.
"We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact," WHO's epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director Maria Van Kerkhove told a social media event, adding that "active monitoring and follow-up of all the passengers and crew who disembark for a 42-day period" was recommended.
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She stressed that the risk to the general public and to the people of the Canary Islands, where the MV Hondius is expected to anchor on Sunday, remained "low".
Meanwhile, Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Saturday it was his country's "duty" to offer a safe port to a cruise ship hit with a deadly hantavirus outbreak for the evacuation of its passengers in the Canary Islands.
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Allowing that operation "is a moral and legal duty for our citizens, Europe and international law", Sanchez said on X after meeting with WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Madrid.
The WHO chief insisted the request for Spain to receive the ship "was not made arbitrarily", pointing out that under International Health Regulations, "the nearest port with sufficient medical capacity must be identified to ensure the safety and dignity of those on board".
"Nearly 150 people from 23 countries have been at sea for weeks, some of them grieving, all of them frightened, all of them longing for home," he said.
Tedros said he was travelling to Tenerife to observe the evacuation operation personally, to "stand alongside" health workers and port staff, and to "pay my respects" to the island and its response.
"The WHO stands with you, and with every person on that ship, every step of the way," he said.