A chartered medical jet carrying 17 American passengers and a British citizen evacuated from the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius touched down at Eppley Airfield in Omaha just before 2:30 a.m. local time on Monday. All eighteen were transferred by escorted convoy to the National Quarantine Unit on the University of Nebraska Medical Center campus, where they will be monitored for a maximum 21-day period.
Confirmed and probable hantavirus cases aboard the Dutch-flagged expedition cruise ship now total ten, including two confirmed deaths and a third suspected death, according to the latest joint update from the World Health Organization and Spain's Ministry of Health. The ship docked at Granadilla on Tenerife on Sunday morning after a five-week voyage from Antarctica via Ushuaia.
The American passengers are expected to be split between Omaha and a secondary facility in Texas for ongoing monitoring; New Jersey health officials are separately monitoring two residents who took an earlier Hondius cruise. None of the Americans has so far tested positive, the Nebraska Medicine team said in a Monday morning briefing.
The WHO has classified the cluster as "low risk to the general public" but has stressed that Andes-variant hantavirus, alone among hantaviruses, has been documented to spread between people in close-quarters settings. Investigators have not formally identified the index case or the mechanism by which the virus reached the ship, but the WHO's preliminary view is that the closed shipboard environment, not airborne transmission, was the key factor.
Andes hantavirus is endemic to parts of southern Argentina and Chile and is most commonly transmitted to humans through aerosolised rodent droppings. Confirmed person-to-person transmission has been recorded in clusters since the late 1990s. There is no vaccine and no specific antiviral; treatment is supportive, with intensive care needed in roughly a third of severe cases.
Spanish authorities will continue evacuations by nationality through the week, with German, Dutch and Belgian passengers expected to leave by chartered flight on Tuesday and Wednesday. Roughly thirty crew members are expected to remain aboard for the onward voyage to the ship's home port of Vlissingen in the Netherlands.
The episode has revived debate over expedition-cruise capacity in remote polar waters, where evacuation pathways are limited. Oceanwide Expeditions, the Hondius operator, said in a Sunday statement that it would suspend the ship's scheduled Arctic season "out of caution" and review its onboard medical protocols.