The 14 Spanish passengers traveling aboard the Hondius will be evacuated at the port of Granadilla de Abona, south of Tenerife, from where they will be flown to Madrid to be admitted to the Central Defense Hospital Gómez Ulla. All of them will undergo quarantine in a special isolation unit of this hospital center that was adapted after the 2014 Ebola crisis. Before flying from Tenerife South-Reina Sofía airport to the peninsula, the travelers will be medically evaluated in the Canary Islands.
Read more The number of hantavirus infections rises to eight after a new case detected in Switzerland
At Gómez Ulla there is a special floor, the 22nd, for NRBQ emergency situations (nuclear, radiological, bacteriological, and chemical), which has a High-Level Isolation Unit (UAAN) currently equipped with 8 hospital beds and a BSL-3 laboratory, a facility designed to work with infectious pathogens that can be airborne and cause serious or fatal diseases. It is the largest facility of its kind in Spain.
Access to the rooms, monitored by cameras, is remotely controlled and each has a prior disinfection area where healthcare personnel remove their personal protective equipment (PPE) after entering the room to attend to a patient. Healthcare workers are assisted under a strict protocol by observer assistant colleagues who are also equipped with protection and do not enter the room.
Read more The ‘Hondius’ is now heading to the Canary Islands after evacuating the three sick to Amsterdam
Upon leaving the rooms and before reaching the common areas of the floor, healthcare workers must pass through a decontamination area. This follows a protocol of “clean” entry and “dirty” exit. The facilities have showers for disinfection and a sterilization system using hydrogen peroxide. The air leaving the rooms passes through four filters that retain 99.9999% of contaminant particles.
The entire system of the 22nd floor of the Gómez Ulla hospital is supervised by a control area that monitors the rooms and the movements of healthcare workers within the facilities. A public address system allows giving advice and orders to healthcare workers while they carry out their tasks to prevent small errors that could lead to infections.
Read more Press conference of Marlaska and García on the situation of the MV Hondius
