Hantavirus outbreak exposes uncertainty about how disease spreads

Passengers disembarked from the MV Hondius at the Canary Islands wearing personal protective equipment. Credit: Chris McGrath/Getty Close to 150 passengers and crew members on the cruise ship MV Hondius struck by an outbreak of a deadly hantavirus have disembarked and are returning to their home countries, where they will quarantine. The way that will happen, however, will differ between countries, in part because outbreaks of the virus are rare and how it spreads between people isn’t well understood. “It is kind of a real-time experiment happening in front of us,” says Vaithi Arumugaswami, a molecular virologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Passengers from Spain will spend one week of court-mandated quarantine at a military hospital, which might be extended as the situation develops. Those returning to the United States will be assessed on arrival at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha and can then choose to quarantine at the facility or at home for 42 days. Meanwhile, those returning to the United Kingdom will be monitored for 72 hours in hospital, then placed in isolation for 45 days at home or at a facility. All passengers on the ship are considered high-risk contacts, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Solna, Sweden, and so should self-isolate, monitor for symptoms daily and undergo testing if they develop them. …