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The United States has organized a repatriation flight for the 17 American citizens aboard the MV Hondius, a cruise ship struck by a hantavirus outbreak that has killed three passengers and left others ill. The ship arrived in Spain's Canary Islands, where the U.S. passengers were evacuated ahead of a flight to Nebraska.
The biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center was activated ahead of the arrivals. Passengers were expected to land in Omaha early Monday morning, spokesperson Kayla Thomas said in a statement. Thomas confirmed that one passenger, who tested positive for the virus but showed no symptoms, would be transported directly to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.
The Department of Health and Human Services separately confirmed Sunday that one passenger had mild symptoms and another had tested mildly PCR-positive for the Andes virus, which is the specific strain of the hantavirus behind the outbreak.
Both were traveling in the plane's biocontainment units "out of an abundance of caution," the department said.
The remaining passengers would go to the National Quarantine Unit for assessment and monitoring.
Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on Sunday that all passengers, who were asymptomatic at the time of evacuation would not necessarily face quarantine upon arrival.
Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union" show, he said authorities would interview and assess each passenger based on their level of contact with symptomatic individuals.
"We're going to interview them and assess them for risk to check if they have been in close contact with somebody who was symptomatic," Bhattacharya said.
'Not COVID': CDC
Following the assessment, passengers deemed low-risk would be given the option to remain in Nebraska or return home, provided their home situation allowed for safe transport without exposing others, Bhattacharya said.
All passengers would remain under observation for several weeks regardless of the outcome.
Seven other Americans who had left the ship earlier in the voyage were already under similar observation protocols, he added.
The CDC noted that people infected with hantavirus are "generally only contagious when they exhibit symptoms."
Bhattacharya said the same protocol had been successfully applied during a 2018 outbreak of the same hantavirus strain.
Responding to criticism over limited public communication from U.S. health authorities on the issue, which comes six years after the COVID-19 pandemic,Bhattacharya said the two situations were not comparable.
"If the threat level were higher, then we would have obviously reacted differently," he said. "This is not COVID. We shouldn't be panicking when the evidence doesn't warrant it."
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