17 American passengers aboard hantavirus-hit cruise ship will quarantine in Nebraska
Source: NBC News
May 8, 2026, 7:00 AM EDT / Updated May 8, 2026, 6:55 PM EDT
Seventeen American passengers aboard the cruise ship at the center of a hantavirus outbreak will quarantine at a Nebraska facility that specializes in handling patients with highly communicable diseases, health officials said. The m/v Hondius is expected to arrive in Tenerife, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, on Sunday at which point disembarkation and isolation plans will be implemented.
A team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet the American passengers there, an agency official confirmed to NBC News. And the State Department is arranging a flight back to the U.S. for them, a department spokesperson said Friday. The 17 passengers will be received at the National Quarantine Unit, a secured facility on the University of Nebraska Medical Center campus in Omaha, said Dr. Michael Wadman, the unit’s medical director.
There, they will be assessed and any necessary quarantine measures will be determined, he said. They will also be monitored daily. All of the people being transported to Nebraska are in good health and are asymptomatic, but should anyone be diagnosed with the virus, they would would be moved to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, said Dr. Angela Hewlett, the medical director of that unit.
The Biocontainment Unit treats patients with hazardous communicable diseases in sterile environments that maximize safety and containment. It features an isolation unit, HEPA filtration system and specialized sterilization “autoclaves” with double doors to decontaminate waste and linens. Hewlett emphasized that the current outbreak is not at Covid levels.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/flight-attendant-tests-negative-hantavirus-new-case-suspected-remote-i-rcna344191
= new reply since forum marked as read
Just kidding
MAGA might want to spread it around for "herd immunity" since that worked out so well last time. 
I'm sure we'll be in very good hands with RFK Jr. 
because that original "Ebola nurse" fiasco happened during the Obama administration in 2014 (before 45), where Chris Crispy Creme was the one who freaked out, detaining an asymptomatic nurse in NJ, who had been treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, before returning to the U.S. to head home to Maine. She settled her lawsuit in 2017.
There was a parallel case in TX the same month where a nurse contracted the disease from a patient, and where the hospital had no corresponding protocols for adequate protection. That nurse settled her suit in 2016.
This mess prompted Obama to get all the various stakeholders together to come up with a plan on how to deal with these types of infectious diseases in the future. It was called -
PLAYBOOK FOR EARLY RESPONSE TO HIGH-CONSEQUENCE EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASE THREATS AND BIOLOGICAL INCIDENTS
(a/k/a the "Pandemic Playbook" ).
There had been all kinds of protocols put in place after the Anthrax "attacks" and subsequent "white powder in letters and packages" incidents in 2001, but nothing for hazardous communicable diseases
That document was issued internally in 2016, where when offered to the incoming 45 administration, it was promptly thrown in the trash.
Trump had numerous tweets about it, including one calling on Obama to resign.
