{"id":787351,"date":"2026-05-10T21:30:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T21:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/787351\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T21:30:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T21:30:13","slug":"americans-onboard-hantavirus-cruise-ship-to-be-repatriated-to-us-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/787351\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans onboard hantavirus cruise ship to be repatriated to US | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 17 Americans onboard the hantavirus<\/a>-stricken cruise ship M\/V Hondius have disembarked the vessel after it docked in Tenerife on Sunday and are being repatriated to the United States.<\/p>\n

Upon their arrival in Spain<\/a>, medical teams from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) awaited and interviewed the passengers, whose identities have not been publicly disclosed and who have not tested positive for the virus, about their exposure on the cruise.<\/p>\n

The passengers are due to arrive in Nebraska on a special chartered flight, the authorities said. Nebraska is home to the national quarantine unit and the Nebraska biocontainment unit.<\/p>\n

Describing the process following the Americans\u2019 arrival at Omaha, the acting CDC director Jay Bhattacharya told <\/a>CNN on Sunday: \u201cWe\u2019re going to interview them and assess them for risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they weren\u2019t in close contact with someone who was symptomatic, then we\u2019re going to deem them low risk. If they were in close contact, we\u2019re going to deem them medium or high risk. At that point, we will offer them alternatives,\u201d Bhattacharya said.<\/p>\n

Those will include \u201can offer to stay in Nebraska if they like, or if they want, to go back home and [if] their home situation allows it, to safely fly them home without exposing other people on the way,\u201d he added, noting that the passengers who choose to go back home will be put under the \u201causpices of their state and local public health agencies, with the CDC support all the way\u201d.<\/p>\n

Addressing concerns over the hantavirus being compared to the Covid-19 pandemic, Bhattacharya said: \u201cThis is not Covid \u2026 and we don\u2019t want to \u2026 cause a public panic over this. We want to treat it with the hantavirus protocols that \u2026 were successful in containing outbreaks in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bhattacharya continued: \u201cWe followed those protocols \u2026 This health alert is coming out, because, again, there\u2019s this discrete event of the 17 arriving in the United States very, very soon and so we just want to make sure that the medical community understands this.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, the CDC issued<\/a> a health alert for clinicians and health departments which included guidance for providers and outlined symptoms associated with hantavirus exposure.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, a CDC official told reporters on a call: \u201cWe are not quarantining anybody,\u201d according to ABC<\/a>, adding that \u201cIt is not recommended to test people that do not have symptoms.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to the US\u2019s decision to not carry out a mandatory quarantine, World Health Organization head Tedros Ghebreyesus told reporters: \u201cOur advice is clear. Starting from May 10, [we recommend] 42 days with active follow up, 42 days of quarantine but it could be in a facility or at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe advise them, we don\u2019t impose laws,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 17 Americans onboard the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship M\/V Hondius have disembarked the vessel after it docked in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":787352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[50,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-787351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116552415797308629","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}