JONATHAN M. METSCH, Dr.P.H. – Tracking Emerging Public Health Challenges – May 9, 2026 – Hantavirus
“No quick dispatching of disease investigators. No televised news conference to inform the public. No timely health alerts to doctors.
““The CDC is not even a player,” said Lawrence Gostin, an international public health expert at Georgetown University. “I’ve never seen that before.””
“Not until late Friday did CDC actions accelerate.
“At their first briefing, held Saturday by telephone only for invited reporters, officials pledged to be transparent in updating the public but said the media could not cite the speakers by name under rules set by aides to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They did not directly answer a question about whether the American passengers could leave the university medical facility when they wanted.
The CDC’s diminished role in this outbreak is an indicator the agency is no longer the force in international health or the protector of domestic health that it once was, some experts said.
The hantavirus outbreak is “a sentinel event” that speaks to “how well the country is prepared for a disease threat. And right now, I’m very sorry to say that we are not prepared,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.” (1)
“A CDC official said Saturday the federal government doesn’t plan to have the repatriated American cruise ship passengers quarantine upon arrival in Nebraska.
“We are not quarantining anybody,” a CDC official told reporters on a call Saturday.
As of Saturday none of the 17 Americans aboard the cruise have tested positive for the hantavirus, according to CDC officials.
When asked if passengers will be tested, a CDC official said, “it is not recommended to test people that do not have symptoms.”
Federal officials walked through their plan for the passengers.
Each passenger is set to be evaluated upon arrival in the U.S., and they may opt to go home and watch for any potential symptoms for 42 days while staying in touch with their state or local health departments, the officials said.
Officials may recommend that passengers doing home-based monitoring limit their activities outside the house to those that don’t involve extensive interactions with other people.
While the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska will be available to them, there are no plans to mandate quarantine, according to officials. The officials said they hope the passengers will be in Nebraska for a limited amount of time.” (2)
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday in a statement that it is sending a team of epidemiologists and medical professionals to the Canary Islands to meet the Americans on board, who will fly to Nebraska upon arrival.
“Because the disease status of the exposed passengers is unknown and responders will be in close contact with potentially symptomatic individuals, it makes sense for emergency responders to don gloves (rubber or latex), a respirator mask like an n95, a protective gown, and eye protection,” a CDC epidemiologist who did not speak on behalf of the agency said in a text message.
The flight will land at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska. The repatriated passengers will then be transported to the National Quarantine Unit at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. It’s unknown how long the quarantine will last.
“We are prepared for situations exactly like this,” Dr. Michael Ash, chief executive officer of Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement released Friday. “Our teams have trained for decades alongside federal and state partners to make sure we can safely provide care while protecting our staff and the broader community.”
Dr. Michael Wadman, the medical director for the National Quarantine Unit, said there are 20 available spaces in the quarantine unit and each individual will have their own room and get food delivered to them. The passengers will have their vital signs monitored daily and have access to a team of health care workers, including infectious disease specialists and critical care physicians.
“Each of the rooms looks very much like a hotel room, with the addition of availability of Wi-Fi, of exercise equipment. If the quarantine is prolonged, those would be important in terms of making sure they’re comfortable,” Wadman said at a press conference on Friday evening.” (3)
“Malani likens contact tracing to monitoring ripples in a pond, “trying to prevent those outer rings from propagating by isolating individuals and by identifying individuals who might be at risk of infection.”
The idea that “there’s a time period where people don’t have symptoms but could be harboring the virus, that’s what contact tracing helps identify,” says Malani.
It starts by pinpointing someone with an infection or suspected infection of the disease in question — in this case, hantavirus. Epidemiologists then look to see with whom they’ve recently had close contact since these individuals are more likely to have been infected.
This hunt for those with the greatest probability of infection is important. “Otherwise, it becomes an impossible web to contain because everyone is connected to everyone,” says Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases doctor at Emory University. “So you have to stratify by high, intermediate and low-risk contacts.”
The next step involves public health agencies ordering precautions for those who are infected or who may be infected but aren’t showing symptoms yet. Such measures may include quarantine, so that an individual doesn’t come into contact with even more people — who may then become infected.
One challenge that hantavirus presents is that its incubation period can last up to several weeks. In other words, “people take a long time to become symptomatic after they’ve been exposed,” says Titanji. “Some of these primary contacts would have to be monitoring themselves for symptoms for up to 45 days to be at the tail end of that very long incubation period.”” (4)
“Patient Zero in the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak has been identified as ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, whose passion for birds may have cost him his life.
The 70-year-old man and his wife, Mirjam Schilperoord, 69, were on a five-month trip to South America. They first landed in Argentina on Nov. 27, and traveling through Chile, Uruguay and then back to Argentina in late March, where they went on a fateful birdwatching adventure.”
“When the Schilperoords returned to Argentina on March 27, they visited a landfill four miles outside the city of Ushuaia.”The Ushuaia landfill is where Argentinian authorities suspect the Dutch couple inhaled particles from the feces of long-tailed pygmy rice rats, which carry the feared Andes strain of the hantavirus — the only form known to transmit from human to human.”
“Four days later, on April 1, the couple embarked on the MV Hondius from Ushuaia, along with 112 others, many of whom were also bird watchers or scientists. On April 6, Leo reported having a fever, headache, stomach pain and diarrhea. He died on the ship five days later.”
“Mirjam got off the ship, along with Leo’s body, on April 24, during a planned stop on the Atlantic island of Santa Helena. She flew to Johannesburg in South Africa and transferred on a KLM flight bound for the Netherlands but never made it. The crew found her too sick to fly and removed her. She collapsed at the airport and died the next day.” (5)
“Fox 8 spoke with Cleveland Clinic Infectious Disease Physician Dr. Donald Dumford and Cuyahoga County Board of Health Medical Director Dr. Prakash Ganesh on Friday.
Both spoke about how the Hantavirus, which can lead to flu-like symptoms anywhere from one to eight weeks after contact, doesn’t have a high risk of reaching Northeast Ohioans.
Humans can be infected with Hantavirus if they come into contact with urine or droppings from rodents like mice or rats that are carrying the disease. It’s usually kicked up into the air and then breathed in, Ganesh explained.
While the current Hantavirus outbreak involves a strain of the virus that can be passed from person to person, Dumford said all other strains of the virus cannot.
Because of the low risk for infection in the area, Dumford said that flu-like conditions should not be thought of as the Hantavirus.
“I think the one thing everyone is asking is: Is this going to spread like Covid. It’s not,” Dumford said. “Unless you were on the cruise ship or exposed to somebody who was on the cruise ship, I would think of about 90 other things before I would think about Hantavirus if you have flu-like symptoms.”” (6)
1.Experts wonder ‘Where is the CDC?’ as a hantavirus outbreak unfolds on a cruise ship, By MIKE STOBBE, https://apnews.com/article/cdc-hantavirus-cruise-ship-trump-who-2eaf686534d31e8ad67482f05e1ec870
2.No mandatory quarantine for US passengers: CDC official, by Youri Benadjaoud, https://abc7.com/live-updates/hantavirus-infection-outbreak-cruise-ship-symptoms-map/19064881/
3.7 states prepare to receive Americans possibly exposed to hantavirus, By Aria Bendix and Erika Edwards, https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/hantavirus-response-us-states-cdc-cruise-ship-quarantine-rcna344303
4.Contact tracing could be key in halting the spread of hantavirus. Here’s how it works, by Ari Daniel, https://www.npr.org/2026/05/08/g-s1-121074/hantavirus-contact-tracing
5.‘Patient Zero’ in deadly hantavirus cruise ship outbreak was Dutch ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, By Gabrielle Fahmy, https://nypost.com/2026/05/09/world-news/hantavirus-patient-zero-was-dutch-ornithologist-leo-schilperoord/
curated by Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H.
Clinical Professor of Environmental Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai