(AURN News) — The State Department confirmed that American passengers from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondias have arrived on U.S. soil, landing at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield at 2:30 a.m. Monday.
Two of those passengers were transported in the plane’s biocontainment units, a precaution taken out of an abundance of caution, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The passengers are being assessed and monitored at a nearby medical center, officials said.
The outbreak aboard the Dutch-flagged expedition vessel has claimed three lives and infected at least eight people across six countries.
The cause is the Andes virus, a rare strain of hantavirus and the only one known to spread from human to human.
Health officials on both sides of the Atlantic are urging the public not to panic.
The WHO and CDC maintain that the risk to the general public remains low, though contact tracing remains underway across multiple continents.
Click play to listen to the report from AURN White House Correspondent Ebony McMorris. For more news, follow @E_N_McMorris & @aurnonline.
