A passenger returning to the U.S. from a Dutch cruise ship where a hantavirus outbreak occurred has tested positive for the virus, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Sunday evening, while a second is showing mild symptoms.
The two passengers are traveling in the plane’s biocontainment units “out of an abundance of caution,” HHS wrote in a post on the social media website X.
The department is working in collaboration with other federal agencies to repatriate 17 American passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship — which docked Sunday in the Canary Islands, a Spanish territory off the coast of Morocco.
In a statement Sunday evening, HHS said the State Department would airlift the passengers, transporting some of them to the Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. The passenger with mild symptoms will be taken to another center, according to HHS. There are 13 such centers nationwide.
“Upon arrival at each facility, each individual will undergo clinical assessment and receive appropriate care and support based on their condition,” HHS said in the post.
As of Saturday, HHS told reporters that there were eight suspected cases associated with the outbreak and three deaths. But on Sunday, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu also announced that one of five French nationals removed from the ship developed symptoms during the flight home.
The incubation period for hantavirus, from first exposure to symptoms, is estimated at one to eight weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. The disease, which is spread by rodents but can in rare cases move from person to person, kills more than a third of people infected. But spread is usually limited to people who have close contact with an ill person, according to the CDC.
In a statement released Sunday afternoon, HHS reiterated that the risk to the American public “remains extremely low.”
“Hantavirus is not typically spread person to person; transmission is rare and limited to close-contact settings,” the statement said.
