MW 'It's not like they can just order in DoorDash': Americans from cruise-ship outbreak could be quarantined until mid-June
By Jaimy Lee
The Andes virus has a long incubation period, and the World Health Organization said there may be more infections 'in the coming weeks'
The Davis Global Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Neb., houses a federal quarantine unit. There at 16 passengers from the cruise ship MV Hondius are quarantining there after an Andes virus outbreak on the ship.
Fifteen Americans who may have been exposed to the Andes virus on a cruise ship will likely remain living in a quarantine center in Omaha, Neb., until the middle of June.
The purpose of the long stay are twofold: By quarantining, they avoid spreading the virus to other people, and it keeps them on a medical campus with clinicians who can jump to action in case they get sick. There are no treatments for hantavirus infections, which have a fatality rate between 30% and 50%, and people who develop hantavirus pulmonary syndrome may need access to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, which can be used to support the lungs.
"Once people enter that phase where it invades the lungs and causes the cardiopulmonary syndrome, they can get sick very quickly after that," said Mark Rupp, an infectious-disease doctor and executive vice chair of internal medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. "That's really why you want to have these folks in proximity to a state-of-the-art hospital, where they could potentially get put on ECMO."
Though there is still little worry that the Andes virus outbreak is the start of another pandemic, the World Health Organization said Tuesday that there could still be more infections.
"At the moment, there is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO's director-general, said during a press conference. "Of course, the situation could change, and given the long incubation period of the virus, it's possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks."
As of Tuesday, there have been 11 suspected illnesses, nine of which have been confirmed with PCR tests. Three people have died. All passengers who disembarked the ship early have been located, according to the WHO.
The Andes virus has an incubation period that ranges from four days to 42 days, which means that health officials need to monitor the passengers and crew members who may have been exposed to the virus until June 21. That's 42 days from May 10 - the date of last exposure on the MV Hondius, the expedition-style cruise ship where the outbreak occurred. WHO officials say those individuals can be monitored at a quarantine facility or at home.
In the U.S., some Americans who disembarked earlier in the trip and returned home before the outbreak had been made public are quarantining at home. There are also two people from the ship who are being housed in a biocontainment center at Emory University in Atlanta and 16 at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha - including one confirmed case in a biocontainment unit, and 15 at the federal quarantine center.
In that facility, each person has their own roughly 300-square-foot room. It looks like a hotel, except the airflow in each room is designed to be negative pressure, which can help prevent contaminated air from leaving the room. The air in the rooms is then passed through HEPA filtration before it's exhausted to the outside. Each room has a bathroom, wifi, a TV and an exercise bike. Clinicians wearing personal protective equipment check people's temperatures and vital signs throughout the day.
"It's not like they can just order in DoorDash and have somebody come in and bring in a pizza," Rupp said. "That's all very, very carefully controlled."
How the Andes virus is transmitted
Health officials and doctors are heavily focused on a 2020 study that analyzed an Andes virus outbreak in Argentina to learn how the virus spreads. That outbreak took place in Epuyén, a village in southwestern Argentina that's close to the border with Chile, where the Andes virus is also endemic. Thirty-four people got sick, and 11 died.
In the study, Argentine researchers described a birthday party in 2018 that was attended by about 100 people as a superspreader event. The so-called index patient attended the party for an hour and a half with fever and malaise, and five people who were seated nearby later developed the symptoms of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, the disease that occurs as a result of an Andes virus infection. More infections occurred after a wake for the second patient who got sick. The researchers found that three patients were the reason for 64% of the secondary cases.
"You can envision in some circumstances, like a birthday party or a wake, that there's celebration going on: hugging, kissing, condolences being expressed," Rupp said. "Those are the kinds of activities that have been seen to link to transmission in past outbreaks."
Experts say prolonged close contact is needed to transmit the Andes virus, which is the only known hantavirus that can be passed between humans. That includes between sexual partners and partners who share a bed - or to a lesser extent, within households. With other hantaviruses, infections occur when a person is exposed to or inhales the dried droppings, urine or saliva of infected rodents. A 2010 study found that hantavirus pulmonary syndrome primarily affects men of working age engaged in rural activities.
Scientists have already sequenced the genome of the virus for several people who have tested positive for the Andes virus in this outbreak, and they have found no changes to the sequences from the outbreak in Argentina that began in 2018.
"It's reassuring that you know this virus hasn't picked up any new tricks," Rupp said. "It's not a COVID-19 scenario, where every other day you'd pick up a report of a new variant."
-Jaimy Lee
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 12, 2026 16:29 ET (20:29 GMT)
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