Cliona O'Flynn

The reports are saying that the air ambulance has now arrived to Cape Verde, which was supposed to be taking at least the British doctor on board, who we know is very, very sick.

Now, where the ship is taking that doctor to

We are not yet sure, because initially he and two other passengers were to be airlifted to La Candelaria, which is the main hospital here in the north of Tenerife, which is on standby now for the ship to arrive.

But the confirmation of where that air ambulance is going to has yet to be 100% confirmed.

And again, that regional spokesperson, the regional government spokesperson, said about a half an hour ago that the destination was still not confirmed.

And he was saying, why doesn't that...

air ambulance go straight to the netherlands because of course the ship's flag is the netherlands flag so that's why the talk of the netherlands is is part of this conversation you know clavicle was saying at some stage because it is a ship registered in the netherlands it should bypass the canary islands and go all the way to holland but you know geographically the canary islands is the first destination that the ship could dock at which has

the kind of medical facilities that are deemed necessarily to deal with any passengers who might be sick.

So still a lot of confusion there.

And I must say, I feel for the passengers on the ship because they would like to know where they're going to.

It will.

And I mean, again, TV Canarias, which is the regional television station here this morning, they had reporters down at the port already and they're talking about the kind of sanitary protection units that would be in place down at the port.

A lot of the times we are dealing also with a lot of boats coming in from West Africa with young migrants.

So the Red Cross are kind of used to dealing with putting in place mobile sanitation protection units

units.

So I would imagine that those kinds of plans are already now being put in place by the medical people here.

And there was a doctor talking recently saying, even though they have now identified the virus as a human to human transmission virus, they're saying, listen, the risks

are very, very low.

And the main concern now, I'd say, once it is confirmed that the boat is coming here, the next, the shift in the political concern will be, right, what we need to do is make sure that our people are protected.

One of the questions I think that will be asked as well, as well as how the passengers get off the boat and where they go initially, is what flights will they be using then to take them from Tenerife back to their country's destination?