Hantavirus CDC: Infected US passengers aboard cruise ship MV Hondius to be brought to this location. Details here

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday affected U.S. passengers aboard a Dutch cruise ship hit by an outbreak of a deadly strain of hantavirus are expected to be repatriated on a U.S. government medical flight to ‌Nebraska. MV Hondius ⁠is ⁠expected to arrive in the Canary Islands on Saturday or Sunday. There are 17 U.S. passengers aboard the ship, according to cruise operator Oceanwide Expeditions.

"The Department of State is closely tracking the hantavirus outbreak on a Dutch cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean and maintaining close contact ⁠with the ‌cruise ship staff, Americans on board, and U.S. and international health authorities," a U.S. State ⁠Department spokesperson said earlier in the day.

The U.S. ​passengers will be brought to Offutt Air ​Force Base in Omaha before being transported to the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska.


A team of CDC epidemiologists and medical professionals has been deployed to the Canary Islands to assess the exposure risks ‌of the U.S. passengers and determine appropriate monitoring measures, the agency said.

An additional CDC team ​is set to ​deploy to ⁠Offutt Air Force Base to support health assessments for the returning passengers.

Hantavirus is usually spread by rodents, but in rare ​cases can be transmitted person-to-person. The CDC said on Friday it will distribute updated monitoring guidance and resources for state and local health departments later on Friday.

Spanish authorities said Friday a woman had been tested for suspected hantavirus after travelling on the same flight as a Dutch woman who stayed on the MV Hondius cruise ship and later died from the virus.

The woman has "symptoms mainly related to coughing while she was in her family home" in the eastern city of Alicante, Spanish health secretary Javier Padilla told journalists.

She was placed in "an isolation room" in hospital, which carried out a PCR test whose results "we hope to have in the first 24 hours", he added.

"We must say this is a pretty unlikely case. A person was found who was two rows behind the person who died with hantavirus," said Padilla.

Interior ministry sources said a South African woman who was also on the flight "is currently asymptomatic in South Africa after staying in Barcelona for a week before returning to her country".

"During her stay, she stayed alone at a hotel and did not maintain close contact," the sources added.




The health ministry later announced the identification of a third person who travelled on the plane, an asymptomatic woman who was observing quarantine at a hospital in the northeastern region of Catalonia.




"This person had not been identified initially due to a change of seat on the plane," the ministry wrote on X.




Airline KLM said on Wednesday that the deceased Dutch woman -- the wife of the first person to die in the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius -- had briefly been on a plane from Johannesburg to the Netherlands on April 25.




She was removed before take-off, died on April 26 in a Johannesburg hospital and later tested positive for hantavirus.