90-Second Read: Follow-up message by the WHO Director-General to the people of Tenerife regarding the Hantavirus response

More than 120 people from 23 countries have safely disembarked and are now being cared for and monitored by public health professionals while in transit or upon arrival in their home countries. They left carrying something they could not have expected to find in Tenerife: the dignity of being cared for by strangers from your community, and people around the world, who chose to help. With profound respect, admiration and gratitude, The statement has been corrected to reflect that the three people confirmed to have died as a result of the Hantavirus outbreak did not all die on the ship. What happened here in Tenerife was something rarer than competence.

But those 150 people and their families know that somewhere in the Atlantic, there was an island community that said "yes." That community was you. Three people died in connection with the outbreak on the Hondius. Behind every public health response there are real lives, real losses and real families who will carry this forever. Science and solidarity operated in coordination, as they must, as they can, when we trust each other.

We also learned of the loss of a member of the Guardia Civil of Tenerife, who died of a heart attack while serving during this operation. Tenerife has proven this, not as a slogan, but as a way to work, and to live. On behalf of the World Health Organization, on behalf of the passengers now home, and on behalf of those families around the world who watched this island with hope: thank you. Only two people died onboard, while the third died upon arrival in South Africa.

Ministers Mónica García, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and Ángel Víctor Torres led with great commitment. To Captain Jan Dobrogowski and his 26-member crew still onboard of the MV Hondius and sailing now to the Netherlands: you held your passengers together through weeks of grief and confinement. We live in a time when it is easy to close doors, to turn inward, to let fear harden into hostility.