Public health officials in the United States outlined their plans to transport and monitor the 17 American passengers set to disembark from a cruise ship at the center of a hantavirus outbreak, indicating on Saturday that the goal is to send them home to self-isolate after an initial assessment at a federal quarantine facility in Nebraska.
Three cruise passengers who were aboard the polar expedition ship Hondius have died in recent weeks. As of Saturday, eight cases of the hantavirus linked to the ship are suspected, with five cases confirmed by testing. The ship is on its way to dock in Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently tracking 17 U.S. citizens on the ship, as well as seven others who have already returned to the United States.
Hantavirus is normally linked to exposure to the urine or feces of infected rodents, but the Andes virus, the strain linked to the Hondius, is capable of limited transmission between humans, according to the World Health Organization. Officials are working on the assumption that the initial patients were infected off the ship, either before they boarded in Argentina or on an excursion. However, global health authorities have repeatedly said the outbreak poses a low public health risk, downplaying comparisons to the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. public health officials said on a call Saturday that the CDC has a team deployed to the Canary Islands, and that it is collaborating with the State Department, Spanish authorities and the WHO. They also said the CDC is preparing to deploy a team to greet U.S. citizens when the ship disembarks.
Spanish health officials outlined plans to repatriate passengers, saying in a briefing earlier Saturday that the U.S. and Britain, along with several European countries, would send planes to evacuate their citizens, Reuters reported. U.S. passengers will be repatriated on a government flight to Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, where they will be transported to the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska, the CDC said Friday.
A CDC official on Saturday’s call told reporters that they “hope” the passengers’ time in Nebraska is limited and that they can move on to home-based management, adding that they’re “working with the passengers about what they feel most comfortable doing.”
“The overall monitoring period will be 42 days, but this is not necessarily all [happening] in Nebraska,” the official said.
The CDC official declined to call the passengers’ period in Nebraska a “quarantine,” saying, “What we’re doing is assessing and monitoring the passengers, but we’re also doing coordination with the passengers and the jurisdiction where they ultimately will go. We’re hoping that this is a short window, but we do not want to rush things.”
Explaining the process, Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, told Fox News, “What it’ll be is self-isolation. None of these folks have any symptoms at all. We’re going to have them isolate for about 42 days.”
Once the passengers return to their respective homes, the CDC official said, local health departments will be monitoring them “at least daily.” The CDC will also be available for questions. If a passenger is considered as having a high-risk exposure to the hantavirus, the official added, the CDC would recommend “limiting activities outside the house that involve extensive interactions with other people.” Their local health departments might also make additional recommendations as to how they should limit activities, the official remarked.
U.S. officials in at least six states — Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas, Virginia and New Jersey — are monitoring symptoms of seven returning passengers and two others potentially exposed to the virus, according to state health officials.
None of the travelers have reported symptoms, according to the public health officials on Saturday’s call.
Global health authorities are working to monitor about 30 passengers overall from at least a dozen countries who have departed the ship — as well as two flights linked to an ill woman. Other contacts are also being monitored, including a Spanish resident who traveled on the same flight as the ill woman, and a Dutch flight attendant. There is also a suspected case in a British national on the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, U.K. authorities said.
Lauren Weber, Lena H. Sun and Victoria Craw contributed to this report.
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