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A plane carrying 17 Americans exposed to hantavirus on a cruise ship in Spain is scheduled to arrive at Eppley Airfield around 2 a.m. Monday.(Carter Lau)<\/p>\nOMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – A plane carrying 17 Americans exposed to hantavirus on a cruise ship in Spain is scheduled to arrive at Eppley Airfield just before 2:30 a.m. Monday.<\/p>\n
Medical professionals will be waiting for them at the airport and bring them to the Nebraska Medicine campus.<\/p>\n
All but two of the passengers are asymptomatic, meaning they aren\u2019t showing any signs of being sick. The one American who tested positive but doesn\u2019t have symptoms will go straight to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, which is separate from the quarantine unit, where they can be treated if needed.<\/p>\n
A plane carrying 17 Americans exposed to hantavirus on a cruise ship in Spain is scheduled to arrive at Eppley Airfield around 2 a.m. Monday.(Carter Lau)<\/p>\n
Nebraska Medicine and UNMC experts are scheduled to gather with officials for a briefing at 9 a.m. Monday. Watch it live in the First Alert 6 streaming app.<\/p>\n
What happens at UNMC<\/p>\n
The passengers will be housed in the National Quarantine Unit. According to Nebraska Medicine, this facility is the only federally funded quarantine unit in the United States, a place to safely house and monitor those who may have been exposed to high-consequence infectious diseases.<\/p>\n
There are 20 300-square-foot rooms fitted with negative air pressure systems that will contain any possible viruses.<\/p>\n
According to the CDC, passengers will not be placed under quarantine upon their arrival at the UNMC-Nebraska Medicine campus. Instead, they\u2019ll be monitored and assessed for a shorter stay, then likely go home for a self-monitoring period. The monitoring period will last 42 days.<\/p>\n
UNMC\u2019s interim chancellor said each passenger\u2019s exposure varies, and their team is ready to handle whatever gets thrown their way.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have experts here who have been doing this for many years. We have an interdisciplinary team that\u2019s very competent. We have all the ingredients to make sure the public is safe, which is a number one priority,\u201d said Dr. Dele Davies, UNMC interim chancellor.<\/p>\n
The medical experts who work at the facility train for these types of possibilities every quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis particular virus is not as contagious as others and so I think it is important that there is no alarm or no panic as a result of this emergency and that it\u2019s not confused with other emergencies that we have experienced,\u201d said Thomas Warren, Senior Chief of Staff.<\/p>\n
The outbreak in Spain<\/p>\n
A dozen countries are getting their citizens back home while working to keep the virus contained. The first waves of passengers started flying home from Spain.<\/p>\n
Before the flights started taking off, Spain officials stressed the public does not need to worry.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the passengers are asymptomatic. They have confirmed this issues that all the passengers are asymptomatic. This unprecedented operation is going as planned,\u201d said Monica Garcia, health minister of Spain.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization says six confirmed cases of hantavirus and two suspected cases are linked to the outbreak on the ship.<\/p>\n
Omaha\u2019s history with infectious diseases<\/p>\n
This is not the first time Omaha has been the hub for containing the first cases of a virus.<\/p>\n
In 2014, two Ebola patients were taken to Nebraska Medicine for treatment. The biocontainment unit there is one of just a few in the country capable of taking patients who could start devastating epidemics.<\/p>\n
Another person possibly exposed to Ebola came to the med center in 2019.<\/p>\n
And in 2020, 13 Americans exposed to COVID-19 on a cruise ship docked in San Francisco were flown to Nebraska Medicine, some of the first Americans to be diagnosed with COVID.<\/p>\n
Health officials want to remind the public that this disease is rare, and human to human transmission is more difficult as compared to COVID-19.<\/p>\n
Omaha Mayor John Ewing Jr. sent in a statement Sunday evening: <\/p>\n
\u201cSixteen individuals aboard a cruise ship affected by the hantavirus are coming to Omaha early Monday. All will be taken to Nebraska Medicine and the University of Nebraska Medical Center campus, where the National Quarantine Unit and Nebraska Biocontainment Unit are located. <\/p>\n
City leadership has been briefed, including my chief of staff Thomas Warren, City Council President Danny Begley and Omaha Fire and Police Department\u202fofficials. <\/p>\n
We are confident in the quality of care that these individuals will receive along with the protocols to keep healthcare workers safe.”<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n
Watch breaking news unfold on our livestream. Download the First Alert 6 streaming app<\/a> to your TV or find us in your favorite streaming platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 WOWT. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – A plane carrying 17 Americans exposed to hantavirus on a cruise ship in Spain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9587,11125,11255,10829,9790,11081,11259,11258,11149,11249,11253,11252,11250,11251,17,11257,11256,11254],"class_list":{"0":"post-21077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-hantavirus","9":"tag-hantavirus-ship","10":"tag-how-do-you-get-hantavirus","11":"tag-monica-garcia","12":"tag-mv-hondius","13":"tag-nebraska","14":"tag-nebraska-biocontainment-unit","15":"tag-nebraska-medicine","16":"tag-nebraska-quarantine","17":"tag-omaha","18":"tag-omaha-hantavirus","19":"tag-omaha-health","20":"tag-omaha-nebraska","21":"tag-omaha-news","22":"tag-spain","23":"tag-unmc","24":"tag-will-i-be-safe-from-hantavirus","25":"tag-will-i-get-the-hantavirus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}