An American and a French passenger linked to the Hondius cruise ship outbreak tested positive for the Andes strain of hantavirus, a rare respiratory disease, less than a day after leaving the expedition vessel.

The French woman developed symptoms on the repatriation flight from the Canary Islands and worsened overnight, Health Minister Stephanie Rist told France Inter radio. She is hospitalized and isolated, as are the other four French passengers.

Governments are taking extensive precautions after a multi-country response to evacuate passengers from the Dutch-flagged ship at the center of an outbreak that has left three people dead. The US update marks the first confirmed US-linked infection tied to the cruise, which public-health experts view as unlikely to cause a pandemic.

“It’s a virus we know,” Rist said on French television late Sunday. “The incubation period is quite long and we need to break the potential chain of transmission from the start.”

The passengers will be isolated for 42 days as France takes the strictest measures of any European Union country, according to Rist.

All 17 US citizens who left the ship are being flown to the US via a State Department airlift, with two passengers traveling in biocontainment units “out of an abundance of caution,” the Department of Health and Human Services said late Sunday in a post on X. Besides the confirmed case, another is showing mild symptoms.

The passengers are expected to be taken to a specialized treatment center in Omaha, Nebraska, for clinical assessment and monitoring, with further care provided as needed.

Precautions

All laboratory-confirmed cases involve the Andes strain of hantavirus, the only known variant capable of limited human-to-human transmission in close-contact settings, the World Health Organization said Friday, reiterating that it assesses the overall global risk as low.

Transmission Pattern

The vigilant government responses reflect the uncertainty that remains around how the virus may have spread on the ship, even as health authorities emphasize that hantavirus is far less transmissible than COVID-19.

“We don’t want to treat it like COVID” Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN’s State of the Union. “We don’t want to cause a public panic over this.”

Repatriation flights began Sunday after the ship anchored off Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands, with passengers being flown to countries that also include Spain, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands, according to WHO officials. The agency has recommended active monitoring of travelers for up to 42 days, reflecting the virus’s long incubation period.

Australia will repatriate and quarantine six people from the ship, Health Minister Mark Butler said Monday, even though none are showing symptoms.

The UK government said military personnel parachuted onto the remote island territory of Tristan da Cunha to deliver medical supplies, underscoring the logistical challenges of reaching the remote island, where a British resident linked to the voyage is being monitored for a suspected infection.

Quarantine Measures

Some experts say the outbreak may challenge assumptions about how the virus spreads. Emerging evidence suggests transmission may not always require prolonged close contact, Ashish Jha, former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said in a post on X, calling for strict quarantine measures for passengers.

Previous research on Andes hantavirus outbreaks has found transmission occurring in shared settings without direct physical contact, including brief encounters in crowded indoor environments, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

There is growing evidence from the ship that you probably don’t need “prolonged close” contact to spread the virus.

And the implications here are pretty clear.

If we are serious about ending this outbreak, all the passengers should undergo a full quarantine away from others

— Ashish K. Jha (@ashishkjha) May 11, 2026