American From Cruise Ship Tests Positive For Hantavirus Amid Return to United States Soil

Seventeen American citizens who were aboard the MV Hondius, the cruise ship at the center of the current hantavirus outbreak, returned to U.S. soil over the weekend, and one of them has tested positive for the virus.

“All 17 are currently en route via @StateDept airlift to the United States, with two of the passengers traveling in the plane’s biocontainment units out of an abundance of caution,” the Department of Health & Human Services wrote in a message shared via X on Sunday, May 10.

“One passenger currently has mild symptoms and another passenger tested mildly PCR positive for the Andes virus,” the message continued.

A French woman who was also on board and has since returned to her home country has tested positive as well. However, French Health Minister Stéphanie Rist said that the woman’s health is deteriorating.

As of now, 22 contact cases have been traced, according to Rist.

Per the BBC, a British national who lives in the U.S. was also among those evacuated alongside the American passengers.

The group landed in Omaha, Nebraska, early Monday, according to the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Medical officials said the passenger who tested positive but is not currently showing symptoms has been placed in the facility’s specialized biocontainment unit for further evaluation and monitoring. The remaining passengers were taken to a separate quarantine unit for assessment.

The evacuations came after passengers began disembarking from the MV Hondius on Sunday in Spain’s Canary Islands, where crews in full protective gear were seen assisting them off the ship.

As Globe previously reported, authorities believe patient zero in the outbreak was a Dutch man who was birdwatching at a landfill in Argentina before boarding the MV Hondius. Officials believe he may have contracted the disease while there, but the information has not been confirmed.

The man began exhibiting symptoms on April 6, and by April 11, he succumbed to the illness. His body was kept on the ship for two weeks and during that time his wife became sick. She later died in a Johannesburg hospital.

Per the Mayo Clinic, the Andes strain of the virus is the only one that can be transmitted person-to-person.

Over the next several days, eight more passengers and crew members fell ill, and by May 2, a third passenger had died aboard the 353-foot Dutch vessel.

The World Health Organization has continued to stress that the risk to the general public remains low as fears of another pandemic similar to Covid have begun to make the rounds online.

“This is not another COVID,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday, per PBS. “And the risk to the public is low. So they shouldn’t be scared, and they shouldn’t panic.”