Seventeen U.S. citizens and one British resident evacuated from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius arrive at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield in the early hours of Monday, with two passengers placed in biocontainment units during the flight.
IDEA Television News Desk
BREAKING: Total confirmed and probable hantavirus cases on the MV Hondius has risen to 10. Three passengers are confirmed or suspected dead.
OMAHA, Nebraska — A chartered flight carrying Americans evacuated from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship MV Hondius touched down at Eppley Airfield in Omaha shortly before 2:30 a.m. Monday morning, carrying at least one passenger who has tested positive for the deadly virus and a second showing symptoms.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed on Sunday that one American passenger had recorded a positive PCR result for hantavirus, while a second passenger developed mild symptoms. Both individuals were transported in the aircraft’s biocontainment units during the flight as a precautionary measure.
“That passenger and another on the plane were traveling in the aircraft’s biocontainment units out of an abundance of caution.”
The passenger who tested positive is reported to be asymptomatic and was isolated from fellow travelers throughout the journey. According to Nebraska Medicine, which operates the receiving facility, a follow-up confirmatory test is being conducted. The second passenger, who reported a mild cough that cleared up within a day, has not returned a positive test result.
The group — 17 U.S. citizens and one British national residing in the United States — is now being assessed and monitored at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha. The positive case will be transferred to the specialized Nebraska Biocontainment Unit. Remaining passengers will undergo continued assessment before eventually returning home, where weeks of monitoring for symptoms will follow.
The crisis began aboard the Dutch-flagged cruise ship MV Hondius, which departed Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1, 2026. A passenger died from hantavirus on April 11 — the first recorded fatality. The ship docked at St. Helena to remove the deceased and disembark his wife, who subsequently died in a Johannesburg hospital on April 26. A third death has since been recorded, with one additional fatality still under investigation.
After several days anchored off Cape Verde — where local facilities were insufficient for a safe mass evacuation — the vessel made its way to Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands, arriving at the industrial port of Granadilla de Abona on May 10. From there, a coordinated 22-country repatriation operation commenced, with passengers boarded onto flights bound for their home nations.
France also repatriated its nationals, with one French passenger deteriorating overnight after developing symptoms mid-flight. That individual is now being treated at a specialist infectious diseases hospital in Paris. French health authorities have identified 22 contact cases — individuals who were on the same flights as infected passengers and are now isolating.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the overall public health risk remains low but has not ruled out some degree of person-to-person transmission aboard the ship — an unusual characteristic attributed to the Andes virus strain, which is the only known hantavirus subtype with suspected human-to-human spread. Hantaviruses are otherwise typically transmitted to humans through contact with infected rodents or their droppings.
Health officials in at least six U.S. states — including Texas, New Jersey, Georgia, California, Virginia, and Arizona — are separately monitoring nine residents who disembarked the ship at earlier ports of call before the full evacuation was ordered.
Nebraska Medicine stated it was asked by federal partners to receive and monitor returning passengers and confirmed it has the capacity and expertise to handle the situation safely. The Nebraska Biocontainment Unit is one of only a handful of such specialized facilities in the United States.
The CDC has been monitoring the outbreak since May 2 and continues to advise that the public health risk to the general population remains low.
