Passengers on hantavirus-hit cruise begin flying home, health officials say outbreak risk is low

Grace Zokovitch, Boston Herald on May 10, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

Passengers from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship who disembarked in the Canary Islands began to head home Sunday as health officials continued to say that the risk to the public remains low.

“We’re in touch with the international health organizations, including the one in Spain, and we have been providing technical assistance to all of those organizations all the way through,” said acting CDC director Jay Bhattacharya on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “This is not COVID, and we don’t want to treat it like COVID. We don’t want to cause a public panic over this. We want to treat it with the hantavirus protocols that we that were, again, successful in containing outbreaks in the past.”

Passengers who were evacuated from the cruise ship MV Hondius stricken by the dangerous virus to the Canary Islands began to be taken home aboard military and government planes Sunday in evacuation trips to over 20 countries expected to last until Monday.

The World Health Organization has stated the hantavirus, which is typically associated with rodents, may have passed from human to human aboard the cruise. Three people have died from the outbreak since April 11, and five passengers who left the ship earlier are have been confirmed infected with the virus.

Spanish passengers were first to be flown out to Madrid and taken to a military hospital, while French passengers were taken to Paris and met with emergency vehicles hours later. One of the five French travelers developed symptoms on the flight, and all were put into isolation with plans to be tested, according to French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterated Sunday that “this is not another COVID” and called the risk to the general public “low.” Officials from the Spanish Health Ministry, the World Health Organization and the cruise company Oceanwide Expeditions had all stated none of the over 140 cruise passengers has developed symptoms of the virus.

The American passengers are headed for the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska, according to the CDC director.

Bhattacharya said the CDC has been in contact with each of the passengers and was “preparing to have them evacuated to the Nebraska facility.” The director, speaking on CNN Sunday, noted they are following a protocol that was successful in controlling a hantavirus outbreak in 2018.

“The risk is a high risk if they’ve been in close contact with somebody who was symptomatic,” said Bhattacharya. “If they weren’t in close contact with someone who’s symptomatic, then that we’re gonna deem low risk.”

Hantavirus typically spreads through contact with residue of rodent droppings, but the Andes virus type is the only type known to spread between human contact, which can occur with close contact to a ill person, according to the CDC. Symptoms can appear one to eight weeks after exposure.

The WHO is recommending home countries continue to have active monitoring and follow-ups with passengers” which means daily health checks, either at home or in a specialized facility,” WHO top epidemiologist Maria van Kerkhove said.

Passengers and crew left luggage on the boat and were only allowed to take essentials like a cellphone and documentation during evacuations, while some crew and the body of the passenger who died on board prepared to sail to Rotterdam, Netherlands, where the boat will undergo disinfection, according to Spanish authorities.

Bhattacharya said the American passengers will be offered the chance to stay in Nebraska if they’d like or go home if “their home situation allows it to safely drive them home without exposing other people on the way, and then be put in the control put under the auspices of their state and local public health agencies, with the CDC support all the way.”

Seven Americans already flew back home weeks ago, Bhattacharya said on CNN, and are in states including California, in Texas, Virginia, and Georgia.

“We’re in close contact with the state and local public health agencies for protocols for managing these patients, including contact tracing, regular check-ins, symptom checks, and if there’s any symptoms that develop, protocols for getting them to care rapidly and testing them.”

The “key message,” he repeated, is that this is not a repeat of COVID.

University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy Director Michael Osterholm said he has “complete confidence that we will have good compliance here” and “within days, this will no longer be a story” on ABC News on Sunday.

Osterholm said there are about 30 cases a year on average in the U.S. and most occur west of the Mississippi, related to the a deer mouse that lives there.

“The good news is that in a sense, it is hantavirus and not another coronavirus or an influenza virus,” said Osterholm. “This is one that has very limited ability to be transmitted person to person. In fact, it’s a rare exception. And so, we have no question about the fact that this really is on the end of its run right now.”

_______