NEED TO KNOW
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Jake Rosmarin is quarantined in Nebraska after he was potentially exposed to the deadly hantavirus on board the MV Hondius cruise ship
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The 29-year-old travel content creator shared in a new interview that wedding planning calls has helped him cope with fear and uncertainty
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“It was so nice to have a moment of normalcy,” he said
Jake Rosmarin is wedding planning during his 42-day quarantine.
The 29-year-old travel content creator has been quarantined in Nebraska after he was potentially exposed to the deadly hantavirus on board the MV Hondius cruise ship. While speaking with CBS Evening News from the National Quarantine Unit in an interview released on Thursday, May 14, he shared that wedding planning calls has helped him cope with fear and uncertainty.
“When I was in my darkest place on that ship, we had a wedding planning call,” Rosmarin said. “It was so nice to have a moment of normalcy and to not feel like I was stuck in that little box on a ship with so much unknown.”
Rosmarin will marry his fiancé, Alex Cestari, on May 6, 2028, per the couple’s wedding registry. The pair got engaged in Sydney, Australia, on Aug. 28, 2025, according to a joint Instagram post.
MV Hondius
Credit: AFP via Getty
Although Rosmarin is looking forward to his nuptials, he’s heartbroken to be missing his cousin’s wedding being stuck in quarantine.
“I was supposed to go to my cousin’s wedding in Italy, and unfortunately I won’t be making that so I feel terrible, but I know it’s the right decision,” he told CBS News.
Rosmarin exclusively spoke to PEOPLE earlier this week about how his “trip of a lifetime ended in a nightmare.”
On May 3, the night before he was supposed to get off the MV Hondius ship, he learned that a passenger had tested positive for hantavirus. He immediately went into “panic mode” and searched statistics about the high morbidity rates for people who contract the rodent-based disease. He also called his mother, a pediatrician in New York, and his fiancé in Boston.
“My mom’s a doctor and she knows a lot of doctors,” he told PEOPLE in an interview published on May 13. “She tried reassuring me just from her research. I said her research wasn’t good enough. But she spoke to other people and they were able to get more information and tried to reassure me that it wasn’t a high risk for me to get it. That was kind of helpful. But I was still scared.”
Rosmarin said he received “a lot of love and support” from his friends and family, but still experienced “a lot of different waves of emotions.” After the ship arrived in the Canary Islands on May 10, he learned that he was going to be taken to Nebraska for quarantine, and arrived at the National Quarantine Unit the next day.
Since then, he’s been “trying to stay positive” and is documenting his life in isolation on social media daily as medical staff monitor him.
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The CDC is monitoring 41 individuals across the U.S. for hantavirus.
Read the original article on People