The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, held a meeting this Saturday at the Moncloa Palace with the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to address the arrival at the port of Granadilla, in the south of Tenerife, of the cruise ship MV Hondius, affected by a hantavirus outbreak.
The meeting between the head of the Executive and the highest official of the WHO has taken place before Adhanom travels to Tenerife to supervise on-site the docking of the ship, accompanied by the Minister of Health and the heads of the Interior and Territorial Policy, Mónica García, Fernando Grande-Marlaska and Ángel Víctor Torres.
According to the Ministry of Health, the delegation will follow the operation in real time from the Command Post activated in order to "guarantee coordination between administrations", as well as "sanitary control and the application of the planned surveillance and response protocols".
Message of calm to the population of Tenerife
The Director-General of the WHO has released an open letter to the citizens of Tenerife in which he stresses that the situation on the cruise ship "is not another Covid-19" and that the "risk to public health remains low".
In this letter, specifically addressed to the residents on the island, Tedros highlights Tenerife's reaction as a gesture of "dignity, solidarity, and compassion," and details that he will personally travel this Sunday to supervise the disembarkation and repatriation operation of the passengers on the ground.
Likewise, he has conveyed his direct gratitude to Sánchez for accepting the arrival of the ship, a decision he has described as an "act of solidarity and moral duty".
The cruise ship is scheduled to dock in Tenerife between 4:00 AM and 6:00 AM on Sunday, Canary Islands time, one hour less than in mainland Spain. According to the Minister of Health, Mónica García, it is expected that the first to disembark the ship will be passengers of Spanish nationality and the epidemiologist representative of the WHO for Africa who is traveling on board.