An American exposed to the deadly hantavirus while on a cruise from Argentina said on Monday that she was not being allowed to leave a federal quarantine unit in Nebraska.
Angela Perryman, 47, received a federal quarantine order, a copy of which she provided to The New York Times, on Monday, after making plans to self-isolate in Florida. It requires her to stay at the National Quarantine Unit in Omaha until the end of May.
Ms. Perryman said she had been tested once for the hantavirus, and the results were negative. She is not experiencing symptoms, she said, although she did have brief conversations on the ship with a passenger who later died from the illness.
She has not tried to leave the quarantine unit, but said staff members from the facility told her that they would contact law enforcement officials to keep her there if she attempted to depart.
It was not immediately clear why Ms. Perryman was being required to stay, though federal law authorizes health officials to impose quarantines to prevent the spread of disease. Representatives from the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Quarantine Unit did not respond to requests for comment.
The order she received from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that officials believe Ms. Perryman will “constitute a probable source of infection to other people” if she leaves the facility to travel to another state.
Federal health officials have previously said that the 18 American passengers from the cruise ship would need to be screened and monitored at the quarantine unit for several days. Officials had suggested that passengers might not be required to stay for the virus’s full 42-day incubation period.
“At some point, they may be able leave their medical centers to continue quarantines at home, depending on how they are doing,” Capt. Brendan Jackson, a C.D.C. official, said in a news conference last week after the passengers arrived in Omaha and Atlanta.
He said that each would have an “individualized decision plan.”
Ms. Perryman is a U.S. citizen who currently lives in Ecuador, she said. She has a home in South Florida, where she was trying to leave to isolate at an Airbnb. Ms. Perryman said she had been told that the government would provide transportation, so that she wouldn’t expose people on a commercial flight.
That changed on Sunday, Ms. Perryman said, when she and the 17 other passengers were told during a video conference call with federal officials that they had to remain at the unit voluntarily, or receive a mandatory quarantine order keeping them there.
Her order came on Monday, authorized by Jay Bhattacharya, the acting C.D.C. director. Citing federal public health law, it requires her to remain in the Nebraska facility for 21 days after her arrival, a period that expires on May 31.
That three-week period is when the risk of becoming symptomatic from the hantavirus is the highest.
The National Quarantine Unit consists of 20 rooms with special air-pressure systems designed to trap contaminated air. Each room has a television, Wi-Fi, exercise equipment and a large bathroom and closet. Despite the amenities, Ms. Perryman said, she would rather quarantine in a less restrictive setting.
“Home quarantine is an absolutely reasonable approach,” she said, adding that what irked her was “the fact that they are requiring us to remain in a locked facility and threatening us, and denying us the right to home quarantine.”
At least seven other Americans departed the MV Hondius cruise ship before it reached the Canary Islands, flying back to the United States on commercial flights before the outbreak was detected. Those people are being monitored by their state health departments, Ms. Perryman noted.
Her quarantine order says she will be given a medical review within 72 hours, and then can appeal the order. Ms. Perryman said she had contacted an attorney and planned to take legal action.
Quarantine laws, which have long caused controversy, were last in the national eye during the coronavirus pandemic, when local and state governments issued various “stay at home” orders to try to prevent spread of the disease.
In January 2020, the federal government, in a rare act, imposed a two-week quarantine on almost 200 people who were evacuated from Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus outbreak originated. They were held at the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, Calif.
Hantavirus is a rare family of viruses carried by rodents. The World Health Organization has identified the Andes subtype, which can be transmitted between people who have had close contact, as the one that affected the passengers.
At least three people have died from the cruise ship outbreak, and several more have fallen ill.
The National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha is the only federally funded facility of its kind. Two passengers from the ship were originally sent to a facility in Atlanta, but have since been moved to Omaha.
Sonia A. Rao reports on disability issues as a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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