Maryland officials monitoring two people for hantavirus after they flew with infected passenger

The Maryland Department of Health is monitoring two residents who shared a plane with a European cruise ship passenger infected with hantavirus.

State health officials stressed Monday that neither resident was a passenger on the Dutch-flagged M/V Hondius and that the infected passenger was on their flight only “briefly.” State officials did not say when the flight occurred.

The cruise ship docked Sunday at the Canary Islands in Spain, and officials from several countries began flying their evacuated citizens home.

U.S. health officials said one of 17 Americans evacuated tested positive and the plane carrying them was due to land Monday in Nebraska, according to The Associated Press.

“One passenger will be transported to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit upon arrival, while other passengers will go to the National Quarantine Unit for assessment and monitoring. The passenger who is going to the Biocontainment Unit tested positive for the virus but does not have symptoms,” Kayla Thomas, a spokesperson for The Nebraska Medical Center, told the AP.

Most strains of hantavirus spread to people via contact with rodents and their bodily fluids, but the Andes strain that affected and killed three aboard the M/V Hondius can spread from person to person.

Maryland health officials said the state has not had a hantavirus case since 2019 and has never had a case involving the Andes strain. For the Andes strain to pass from person to person, there needs to be “close, prolonged contact” with the infected individual, state officials said.

Virginia officials are monitoring a resident who got off the M/V Hondius before the outbreak was fully identified and will do so until 42 days have passed since their last potential exposure.

Dr. Brandy Darby, director of investigation and surveillance for the Virginia Department of Health, told WUSA-TV that the state resident “continues to be healthy.”

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CBS News that hantavirus is “very different than COVID, and we should treat it differently than COVID. … Unlike COVID, the way that people get it from person to person is much, much more difficult for that to happen.”