Seventeen Americans and a British citizen evacuated from the cruise ship hit with a deadly outbreak of hantavirus arrived in the U.S. early Monday.
One American on the repatriation flight began showing symptoms of hantavirus and another “tested mildly PCR positive for the Andes virus,” the Department of Health and Human Services said Sunday night.
Both passengers were “travelling in the plane’s biocontainment units out of an abundance of caution,” HHS said. The passenger who tested positive was not experiencing symptoms, according to a statement from the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
The flight landed at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, and a convoy, ambulance and multiple buses arrived early Monday at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
The announcement on the condition of the two Americans came after France’s prime minister said Sunday afternoon that a citizen of that country also began showing symptoms during a repatriation flight. All five passengers “were immediately placed in strict isolation until further notice,” and will undergo testing, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said on social media.
The country’s health minister later told France Inter radio the woman tested positive for hantavirus and her condition has deteriorated.
There have been at least nine confirmed or suspected cases of hantavirus linked to the outbreak on the ship, the MV Hondius, including three fatalities: A Dutch couple and a German woman. Patients involved in the hantavirus outbreak have tested positive for the rare Andes strain that can be transmitted from person to person. Hantavirus is typically transmitted by rodents.
The MV Hondius was carrying nearly 150 people from more than 15 countries, including 17 Americans, when it set sail earlier this week from Cape Verde to Granadilla, after Spain agreed to take the ship.
Passengers began disembarking Sunday morning from the ship after it docked in Spain’s Canary Islands. They were carefully evacuated by nationality and placed on repatriation flights. Spanish nationals disembarked first, then boarded a plane for Madrid, where they were taken to a military hospital. French and British passengers also evacuated.
Oceanwide Expeditions, the ship’s operator, said all passengers and a portion of the approximately 60 crew members evacuated the ship using launch boats that carry a maximum of five to 10 people each.
People were then checked for symptoms. Passengers and crew members had no contact with the local population on Tenerife before they were taken to their evacuation flights, authorities said. A video shared by Spain’s defense ministry shows the inside of one repatriation flight, revealing surfaces wrapped in plastic and crew members wearing protective gear.
The operation in Tenerife was supervised by Spain’s health and interior ministers as well as the World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Although health officials have said risks from the cruise outbreak remain low for the general public, those disembarking and port workers wore face masks, hazmat suits, respirators and other protective gear during the evacuation process.
After disembarkation, a skeleton crew was to take on supplies and then begin the journey to Rotterdam, Netherlands, which is expected to take about five days, Oceanwide Expeditions said. The body of a passenger who died on board will also remain on the ship, which will be disinfected once it arrives in Rotterdam, according to Spanish authorities.
U.S. nationals were Sunday’s last evacuation group. The CDC said it was sending a team of epidemiologists and medical professionals to the Canary Islands to “conduct an exposure risk assessment for each American passenger and provide recommendations for the level of monitoring required.”
After being removed from the Hondius, 18 people — 17 Americans and one British person who lives in the U.S., according to France’s prime minister — were flown back to the U.S. in a plane that was sent by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and HHS. The passengers were to be taken to a special biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
The passenger who tested positive will be sent to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, the medical center said, where they will be monitored “out of an abundance of caution and follow-up testing will be performed.” The medical center said the passenger who tested positive was “managed separately from other passengers during transport using appropriate biocontainment measures.”
The university’s statement did not mention the passenger HHS said was experiencing symptoms.
Michael Wadman, medical director of the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, previously said that each American will have their own room while they quarantine for an unspecified amount of time
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acting Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told CNN’s “State of the Union” that seven Americans who left the cruise have been in the U.S. for roughly two weeks, and they are living across the country. One of the Americans who has returned home is a Northern California resident, according to the Santa Clara Public Health Department.
Each country has come up with its own quarantine plan. British authorities said U.K. passengers and crew will be hospitalized for observation once they are flown home, while the 14 Spaniards will be under quarantine at a military hospital in Madrid.
In France, Lecornu said that in addition to isolating the passengers on the repatriation flight, he will issue a decree “to implement appropriate isolation measures for close contacts and to protect the general population.”
Hantaviruses are a family of diseases that are spread to people from rodents through urine, droppings or saliva, according to the CDC. It can take up to eight weeks after contact for symptoms to develop.
WHO says that the Andes strain of the virus, which is found in Latin America, is the only one that is known to be able to transmit the virus through human-to-human contact, with Tedros assessing the public risk as “low.”
He told CBS News at a briefing Sunday morning that Americans “shouldn’t worry” about the impending return of cruise passengers who are U.S. citizens and encouraged people to put their trust in health officials.
“This is not another COVID, and the risk to the public is low. So, they shouldn’t be scared and they shouldn’t panic,” said Tedros. He also said several years of scientific evaluations of the virus and its behavior, in addition to how the virus has behaved so far in this particular outbreak, have informed that judgement.