HHS said in a post on the social platform X late Sunday that it was “supporting @StateDept in the repatriation of 17 American citizens from the MV Hondius cruise ship affected by the Andes variant of hantavirus.”
“All 17 are currently en route via @StateDept airlift to the United States, with two of the passengers travelling in the plane’s biocontainment units out of an abundance of caution,” HHS said in its post. “One passenger currently has mild symptoms and another passenger tested mildly PCR positive for the Andes virus.”
A French passenger also tested positive, according to officials, while nearly all passengers on the ship have been evacuated.
An outbreak of hantavirus on a Dutch cruise ship in the Atlantic spiked concerns about the virus last week. Stories of people stuck on a cruise ship with a deadly disease going around brought back memories surrounding the first period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Jay Bhattacharya said Sunday that hantavirus “is not COVID.”
“We’ve been communicating the last week as the — as the sort of … press attention has picked up more with the public, as is appropriate, given the nature of this disease,” Bhattacharya told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“The key message I want to send to your audience is that this is not COVID, this is not going to have — lead to the kind of outbreak,” he added.
Bhattacharya previously said the risk to most Americans is “very low” from hantavirus, a strain of the Andes virus.
“Hantavirus is not spread by people without symptoms, transmission requires close contact, and the risk to the American public is very low,” he said in a statement.
