Overview
- The operation, which begins Sunday in Tenerife, will move 147 asymptomatic passengers and crew off the ship by launch and straight to chartered flights by nationality without entering terminals.
- Spain’s protocol requires Spanish contacts to quarantine at Madrid’s Gómez Ulla hospital with PCR testing on arrival and again on day seven under active temperature checks.
- Health officials have isolated two women linked to a related flight exposure, one hospitalized in Alicante with mild respiratory symptoms and one asymptomatic in Barcelona pending test results.
- The World Health Organization is on site with Spain’s health and interior ministers as multiple countries arrange repatriation flights and the EU prepares backup medical aircraft.
- Authorities have identified the Andes strain, which can spread between people, and investigators are probing a bird dump near Ushuaia as a likely exposure point while WHO assesses public risk as low.