Contingency plans are in place in the capital city region should a cruise ship with an outbreak of serious illness on board arrive in port.

St. John’s council lead on the cruise industry, Jill Bruce was responding to concerns raised after the MV Hondius docked at Tenerife.

At least three people are dead, linked to an outbreak of a human-spread strain of hantavirus on board the cruise ship.

St. John’s has a growing cruise ship industry, leading to questions about what would happen here if something similar should occur.

Bruce says the Port of St. John’s and NLHS have plans in place should a similar situation occur here.

“From the perspective of the city, we have our own emergency preparedness team, but we would take our advice from NL Health Services and the Port Authority, so they would have their own protocols for handling this type of situation.”

“So we could be ready for whatever happened. It could be something like (the hantavirus) that happened, or it could be, something like where we hear of reports where incidents happen pretty much on the regular, but they’re small.”