There are currently no hantavirus cases among the 18 passengers who returned to the U.S. from the cruise ship MV Hondius, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The 18 passengers, however, requested to stay at the Nebraska Quarantine Facility in Omaha through May 31, 2026 — the 21-day point in their monitoring period — the federal public health agency said in a statement on Tuesday. Two passengers who were initially taken to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta were transferred to Nebraska on Friday after being medically cleared.

The CDC issued quarantine orders for two of the 18 passengers. “Quarantine is a public health measure, available at the federal, state, and county level, and used as necessary to protect communities,” according to the CDC.

The CDC said last week that at least 41 people in the United States were being monitored for potential exposure linked to the MV Hondius.

As of Tuesday, the public health agency said the “risk to the U.S. is low.”

The cruise ship at the center of the deadly hantavirus outbreak arrived in the Netherlands on Monday, ending a seven-week voyage that left three dead, eight others sickened and dozens of passengers being monitored for symptoms.

The MV Hondius docked in Rotterdam with the ship's captain and 26 crew members on board, as well as the body of a German man who died at sea. The crew members were scheduled to disembark and either quarantine at home or in mobile units in the area. None were showing symptoms of the virus, Dutch health authorities said.

The rest of the ship's 150 passengers had already disembarked and are either in quarantine or being monitored in their home countries. The ship itself will be disinfected and inspected by public health officials before returning to sea.

Meanwhile, the total number of hantavirus cases linked to the ship rose to 11 after a Canadian passenger tested positive.

The cruise ship at the center of the deadly hantavirus outbreak arrived Monday in Rotterdam, where it will be disinfected before returning to sea.

The MV Hondius docked with the ship's captain and 26 crew members on board, as well as the body of a German man who died at sea. The rest of the ship's 150 passengers had already disembarked and are in quarantine or being monitored in their home countries.

The remaining crew members were scheduled to disembark and either quarantine at home or in mobile units in the Rotterdam area. None were showing symptoms of the virus, Dutch health authorities said.

According to NBC News, the ship is set to sail again "as soon as next month after being disinfected and inspected by public health officials."

Per NBC, a travel site lists a “Polar Cruise” that starts on June 5, with prices starting at $5,750 per person.

The Colorado case involves the Sin Nombre strain, not the Andes strain that circulated on the MV Hondius, and is the kind of infection state officials say turns up nearly every spring and summer.

From 1993 through 2023, Colorado reported 121 hantavirus cases to the CDC. Sixty-three percent of those patients died.

The Canadian patient's spouse was admitted to a Victoria, British Columbia, hospital on Wednesday with mild symptoms of their own, and a third member of the Canadian group has since been transferred from secure isolation lodging to a hospital for testing as a precaution, the Public Health Agency of Canada said Saturday.

Samples are at the agency's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with confirmatory results expected within two days.

British Columbia's senior health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, said the case is not what officials had hoped for but is what they had planned for. "Hantavirus is a very different virus than the other respiratory viruses that we've been dealing with — like COVID, like influenza, like measles," Henry told CBC. "It remains one that we do not consider to have pandemic potential."

Two former passengers of the MV Hondius cruise ship arrived at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center on Friday afternoon, bringing the total number of passengers being monitored at the Omaha facility to 18, UNMC said in a statement.

The pair had been at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta since arriving from the Canary Islands on Monday. Both have now been "medically cleared to transition to the NQU," the medical center said. One of the two had earlier been admitted to Emory's biocontainment unit with mild symptoms but tested negative for hantavirus. The other was an asymptomatic close contact who had been monitored at Emory.

New York health officials are investigating a suspected case of hantavirus involving a student at Geneva High School in Ontario County, in the state's Finger Lakes region, the Geneva City School District confirmed to local outlets on Thursday.

The suspected case is believed to have been locally acquired and is not connected to the international hantavirus outbreak linked to the MV Hondius cruise ship.

“The New York State Department of Health is aware of an individual in Ontario County with a suspected case of locally acquired hantavirus, which is unrelated to the Andes strain impacting passengers who were on board the MV Hondius cruise ship, ” Acting Commissioner of Health James V. McDonald MD, MPH, wrote on X.

Since the CDC started tracking the virus in 1993, there have been an average of about 29 cases per year in the United States. The number fluctuates significantly from year to year, however.

Cases are concentrated in the western half of the country because the virus tends to thrive in arid climates and open developed areas. According to the CDC, 94% of all hantavirus cases in the U.S. between 1993 and 2023 were found west of the Mississippi River.

While the total number of annual cases is low, the virus has a high mortality rate. Overall, 35% of known infections resulted in death.

The World Health Organization held a media briefing on Friday on the status of the hantavirus outbreak linked to the cruise ship MV Hondius. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that as of today, a total of 10 cases, including 3 deaths, have been reported to the WHO. This includes eight people who have been confirmed positive for the Andes virus through laboratory testing and two probable cases. Since May 2, no further deaths have been reported.

He said that as passengers continue to return to their home countries, more cases are likely to be reported in the coming days due to the long incubation period of the Andes virus, which is up to six weeks.

“The WHO repeats that the risk from this event to the global population is low,” Tedros said.

Dr. Stephen Kornfeld, the passenger from the MV Hondius who was transported to the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s biocontainment unit in Omaha after testing "faintly positive" for hantavirus, told CNN he has since tested negative and been moved to the hospital's quarantine unit with 15 other cruise ship passengers.

None are reporting symptoms.

The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that all 11 confirmed or suspected cases of hantavirus are among people who were passengers aboard the MV Hondius.

The WHO and health departments around the world are working to identify others who may have been exposed to the virus by passengers after they left the ship. So far, there are no confirmed cases of transmission anywhere else.

“Follow-up and contact tracing for all contacts of hantavirus cases linked to the cruise ship [are] ongoing,” the WHO said.

During a conference call with reporters, Dr. David Fitter, incident manager for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's hantavirus response, said the risk to the general public remains low.

When asked how the hantavirus outbreak is different from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fitter pointed out that COVID was a novel virus.

"This is not a novel virus," Fitter said. "This is a known virus. We've seen this in the United States before and we know how to respond to it, and that's what we're doing."

An American doctor has identified himself as the lone cruise ship passenger who was transported to the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s biocontainment unit in Omaha after testing positive for hantavirus.

Dr. Stephen Kornfeld, a retired oncologist from Bend, Ore., told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday that he was on vacation on the MV Hondius, and stepped in to assist sick passengers after the ship’s doctor became ill.

Kornfeld said he experienced flu-like symptoms on the cruise but that it's unclear if they were related to hantavirus.

He said he tested “faintly positive” and is currently asymptomatic while quarantining inside the hospital’s biocontainment unit.

“I feel great. I feel wonderful, 100%,” Kornfeld said. “It’s a little weird being in here by myself, but the nurses come in, the doctors come in. I’m on WhatsApp all the time. It’s really amazing how quickly time flies.”

The passengers aboard the MV Hondius who tested positive for hantavirus were confirmed to be infected with the Andes virus, the only type of hantavirus known to have limited person-to-person transmission.

Dr. Syra Madad, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Harvard Belfer Center, told Yahoo that the Andes virus is not new to the U.S., based on previous data.

“In the United States, we actually did have a case of Andes virus in 2018 in a woman in Delaware,” Madad said. “She had travel history to Chile and Argentina, developed hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, and she recovered after nearly a week of supportive care. But more importantly, CDC had contact-traced 53 contacts across six states in that particular case, and nobody became symptomatic.”

Health officials in Minnesota are monitoring one person “who may have briefly been exposed overseas to someone who was on board the MV Hondius cruise and tested positive for hantavirus (Andes virus),” the state’s Department of Health announced on Tuesday.

“MDH is in contact with the person who was exposed. They have been very cooperative, and we are monitoring them daily for symptoms. The person does not currently have symptoms,” the statement said.

A French woman who traveled on the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius cruise ship is on life support at a Paris hospital, where she is being treated with an artificial lung.

Dr. Xavier Lescure, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat Hospital in Paris, said Tuesday that the woman has a severe form of hantavirus and that her condition had deteriorated.

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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. Lescure called it “the final stage of supportive care.”

There have been a total of 11 reported cases linked to the cruise ship, nine of which have been confirmed. Three people have died.

Another cruise ship, operated by the Ambassador Cruise Line, made headlines today after local authorities in southwest France stopped passengers and crew from disembarking in Bordeaux on Wednesday.

The precautionary measure is linked to dozens of possible cases of gastroenteritis aboard the British ship, called the Ambition. One passenger has died, Reuters reported.

There is no reason to link what appears to be a stomach flu outbreak on a ship that came from Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Liverpool, England, with the hantavirus cluster on the luxury ship Hondius that traveled between Argentina and the Canary Islands, the regional health authority said in a statement.

Gastrointestinal illnesses can be common on cruise ships. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already reported two E. coli outbreaks and two norovirus outbreaks on cruise ships this year.

Could passengers on the MV Hondius pursue legal action against the cruise ship operator Oceanwide Expeditions? A general “terms and conditions” page on Oceanwide’s website says the company cannot be held liable for anything from illness and death to lost luggage and robbery.

But Oceanwide's sweeping waiver terms might not hold up in court if passengers show the company was grossly negligent, Reuters reported, citing Dutch legal experts.

The terms and conditions stipulate that any lawsuit must be brought in the Netherlands.

However, there have been no reports of passengers suing or saying they will sue.

Gross negligence and recklessness are hard to prove under Dutch law and would require evidence that Oceanwide knew something was dangerous but did it anyway, legal experts said.

Examples could include ignoring warnings or instructions from health authorities and failing to follow basic infection-control protocols while knowing this would put patients in harm's way, according to legal experts.

There are no reports of the MV Hondius crew engaging in misconduct, and some passengers have publicly praised them for how they handled the situation.

An Oceanwide spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Twelve staff at a Dutch hospital have been quarantined as a preventive measure after blood and urine from a hantavirus patient were handled without following strict protocols.

The staff will be quarantined for six weeks, the Radboudumc hospital in the city of Nijmegen said, adding that the infection risk was very low and patient care continued uninterrupted.

Radboudumc admitted its hantavirus patient, a passenger from the cruise ship, on May 7.

"What happened... is that strict procedures were followed, but not the very strictest procedures that apply in cases involving this hantavirus," Dutch Health Minister Sophie Hermans told parliament. The likelihood that staff have been infected as a result is small, but because we know we are dealing with a serious virus, the hospital has said, 'we will play it safe.'"

"It really is a different situation than with COVID. With the knowledge we have and the measures we are taking, we are confident we can keep this virus under control," she added.

Four people who were being observed for possible hantavirus infection in Italy have all tested negative, the Italian health ministry said on Wednesday.

Tests were conducted on an Argentine tourist hospitalized with pneumonia, a man from the southern Italian region of Calabria who was in voluntary isolation, a British tourist located in Milan and a companion traveling with him.

"The risk connected with the virus remains very low in Europe and therefore also in Italy," the health ministry added.

A U.S. woman who survived a serious bout of hantavirus three decades ago has spoken about her experience battling the condition.

Shaina Montiel, 38, was just 5 years old when she contracted the virus in 1993 during an outbreak across Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.

Montiel told ABC News in an interview that aired on Good Morning America on Tuesday that the searing pain was so bad that it got to the point where “I was just having to throw up because it hurt so bad.”

When she was diagnosed, little was known about the virus.

"My mom, she was very panicked, very worried, very stressed," she said. "There was just a lot of unknown answers, and knowing what I went through and how awful it was, like I would not wish that upon anybody."

Surveillance of the hantavirus disease in the U.S. began in 1993, during the outbreak, which had killed 32 of 53 infected people by the end of the year. As of 2023, 830 cases have been reported, according to the CDC.

The map below, from the CDC, shows the distribution of cases up until the end of 2023.

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Eighteen Americans who disembarked from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship are currently receiving treatment at U.S. facilities in a bid to contain the virus.

Of those, 16 people who traveled on the MV Hondius are being monitored at the National Quarantine Center in Omaha, Neb. The two remaining passengers, including one who is symptomatic, were sent to Emory University in Atlanta.

However, the mildly symptomatic U.S. passenger who was taken to the biocontainment unit in Atlanta has tested negative for hantavirus, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The 16 other passengers who are being monitored in Nebraska are asymptomatic, including one person who previously tested positive for hantavirus.

Kansas became the ninth state to monitor residents for potential hantavirus exposure, with health officials observing three people who had close contact with someone on the cruise ship who later tested positive.

Worldwide, there are a total of 11 hantavirus cases reported. The latest is a 25-year-old Italian from the southern region of Calabria, who had been placed in quarantine after traveling on a Dutch KLM flight alongside a woman who later died from a hantavirus infection.

The World Health Organization has stressed that while it expects more cases to arise, “there is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak.”