The Maryland Department of Health is monitoring two residents who shared a plane with a European cruise ship passenger infected with hantavirus.
State health officials stressed Monday that neither resident was a passenger on the Dutch-flagged M/V Hondius and that the infected passenger was on their flight only “briefly.” State officials did not say when the flight occurred.
The cruise ship docked Sunday at the Canary Islands in Spain, and officials from several countries began flying their evacuated citizens home.
U.S. health officials said one of the 17 Americans evacuated tested positive and the plane carrying them landed Monday in Nebraska.
“One passenger will be transported to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit upon arrival, while other passengers will go to the National Quarantine Unit for assessment and monitoring. The passenger who is going to the Biocontainment Unit tested positive for the virus but does not have symptoms,” said Kayla Thomas, a spokesperson for The Nebraska Medical Center.
On Tuesday, French hospital officials said a woman infected in the deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship is critically ill and being treated with an artificial lung. The outbreak has now reached 11 total reported cases, 9 of which have been confirmed.
Three people on the cruise died, including a Dutch couple that health officials believe were the first exposed to the virus while visiting South America.
The French passenger hospitalized in Paris has a severe form of the disease that has caused life-threatening lung and heart problems, said Dr. Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat Hospital.
He said the woman is on a life-support device that pumps blood through an artificial lung, providing it with oxygen and returning it to the body. The hope is that the device relieves enough pressure on the lungs and heart to give them some time to recover. Dr. Lescure called it “the final stage of supportive care.”
With the evacuation of all passengers and many crew members completed, the MV Hondius is now sailing back to the Netherlands, where it will be cleaned and disinfected.
Most strains of hantavirus spread to people via contact with rodents and their bodily fluids, but the Andes strain that affected and killed three aboard the M/V Hondius can spread from person to person.
Maryland health officials said the state has not had a hantavirus case since 2019 and has never had a case involving the Andes strain. For the Andes strain to pass from person to person, there needs to be “close, prolonged contact” with the infected individual, state officials said.
Virginia officials are monitoring a resident who got off the M/V Hondius before the outbreak was fully identified and will do so until 42 days have passed since their last potential exposure.
Dr. Brandy Darby, director of investigation and surveillance for the Virginia Department of Health, told WUSA-TV that the state resident “continues to be healthy.”
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CBS News that hantavirus is “very different than COVID, and we should treat it differently than COVID. … Unlike COVID, the way that people get it from person to person is much, much more difficult for that to happen.”
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.