Jake Rosmarin didn't know anything was wrong at first. Odd coincidences, he called them, until the word "hantavirus" started circulating among passengers aboard the MV Hondius, and he did what anyone would do. He Googled it.
What he found scared him.
Rosmarin, one of 18 Americans evacuated from the Dutch cruise ship after a hantavirus outbreak that has now killed three people, spoke with Good Morning America on Tuesday from inside the University of Nebraska Medical Center's quarantine unit in Omaha. He had not tested positive for the virus. He was not showing symptoms. But he plans to stay locked down for the next 42 days anyway, a decision he described as the right one for himself and his family.
The MV Hondius departed Argentina in early April. Within weeks, a hantavirus outbreak tore through the ship. By the time passengers and some crew members from 23 countries were evacuated on Sunday, health officials had tallied at least 11 known cases worldwide and three confirmed deaths among those who had been aboard.
On Monday, officials transported 16 American cruise ship passengers to the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Fifteen were placed in the quarantine unit. A sixteenth, the only U.S. passenger to test positive so far, was moved into the facility's biocontainment unit. Two additional passengers were flown to Emory University Hospital's Serious Communicable Diseases Unit in Atlanta, where one symptomatic patient is receiving treatment and another, asymptomatic, is under evaluation and monitoring.
The Washington Examiner reported that officials said 17 Americans had been aboard the Hondius, plus one British dual national returning to the U.S. All are under a 42-day monitoring period that officials described as conservative. No U.S. deaths have been reported.
Rosmarin, speaking from his quarantine room, said he felt relief once the plan was in place and the evacuation was underway.
"I was relieved to get off the ship and have a plan in place, and they were treating us really, really well here, so I can't ask for anything more than that."
He said he has stayed in touch with fellow passengers. Everyone, he reported, seems to be in good spirits.
The conditions aboard the ship before the evacuation were far less reassuring. An American doctor aboard the Hondius previously described dire conditions as the death toll mounted and passengers waited for a plan that took days to materialize.
The World Health Organization identified the outbreak as the Andes strain of hantavirus, a variant endemic to Argentina and, unlike most hantaviruses, capable of spreading between humans. That distinction matters. Most hantavirus strains spread only through contact with infected rodent droppings or urine. The Andes variant can transmit from person to person, though it requires prolonged close contact with someone who is already symptomatic.
Breitbart reported that as of a W.H.O. update earlier this month, eight cases had been reported onboard, including three laboratory-confirmed infections and three confirmed deaths. The ship's journey to safe harbor was itself tangled in international politics: Spain agreed to receive the Hondius in the Canary Islands after Cape Verde proved unable to carry out the necessary health protocols. Canary Islands president Fernando Clavijo said he would not "blindly jeopardize" the local population, accusing Madrid of not acting "in good faith."
Early in the crisis, the WHO warned that human-to-human spread could not be ruled out aboard the stranded ship, a warning that proved well-founded as case counts climbed.
The CDC moved to reassure the public. Dr. David Fitter of the CDC told reporters the agency is confident in its response, as Fox News reported.
"Hantavirus is a known virus. It is a known pathogen. And that helps us, we know what we're doing and we know how we're responding."
Fitter added: "The system worked. We've moved quickly." Federal, state, and local agencies are coordinating with the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the WHO on the response. The CDC said its top priorities are the safe return of passengers and protecting American communities as exposed individuals arrive and undergo monitoring.
The CDC activated an emergency response as at least five U.S. states began monitoring cruise ship passengers, a sign of the scale of the logistical challenge even for an outbreak officials describe as low-risk to the broader public.
Adm. Brian Christine, the HHS assistant secretary for health, was blunt about the threat level. "Let me be clear, let me be crystal clear, the risk of hantavirus remains very, very low," Christine said. He emphasized that the Andes variant "does not spread easily, and it requires prolonged close contact with someone who is already symptomatic."
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus struck a similar note, saying the evacuation was necessary but the broader danger is contained. "If they stayed longer on the ship, the situation could have been difficult," Tedros said. He added: "There is nothing to fear, the risk is low, this is not another COVID."
The Associated Press reported that the last remaining passengers disembarked in Tenerife and were flown to more than 20 countries to enter quarantine. Six people with confirmed or suspected hantavirus cases were in quarantine worldwide, according to the WHO. A French woman was confirmed infected and hospitalized in intensive care in Paris. In the U.S., one evacuated American tested positive without symptoms, and another had mild symptoms.
The scope of the monitoring effort, spanning continents, involving dozens of national health systems, underscores just how quickly a confined outbreak on a single ship can become an international coordination problem. And the 42-day quarantine window is long. Rosmarin acknowledged as much but said he considers it the right call.
"I think that is the best decision that's for me and for my family, and I know that here, I'm in the best care possible."
Since the initial evacuations, additional infections have been confirmed among evacuees who were initially cleared as asymptomatic, a development that raises fair questions about the reliability of early screening and the wisdom of moving passengers through airports and across borders before the incubation window closed.
Several questions hang over the response. Which officials made the call on timing, and why were passengers moved before the full incubation period had passed? What protocols governed the transport of potentially infected individuals through commercial and military aviation corridors? And how did an outbreak of a rare, human-transmissible hantavirus strain go undetected long enough to produce three deaths aboard a cruise ship that departed Argentina weeks earlier?
Rosmarin himself described the early period aboard the Hondius in telling terms. He said he had not realized the seriousness of the situation at first.
"For me, it just felt like weird coincidences, and honestly, I didn't think anything was wrong until we found out that it was hantavirus, and that's when I was scared. Because, as you know, when you hear about a virus you don't really know about, you Google it, and when you Google hantavirus, it's definitely a scary virus to be seeing."
That gap, between what passengers were told and what was actually unfolding, deserves scrutiny. Officials may be right that the broader public risk is very low. But the people who boarded that ship, paid for that trip, and now face six weeks in a quarantine unit in Omaha are living with the consequences of whatever went wrong in the weeks between departure and evacuation.
When the government says "the system worked," the people inside the system deserve to be asked whether they agree.
