Tuesday, May 11, 2026A Spanish passenger who was evacuated from the cruise ship over the weekend has tested positive for the hantavirus on Tuesday, the Spanish Health Ministry said, confirming the result of an earlier provisional test.

The patient presented presented with a “low-grade fever and mild respiratory symptoms,” on Monday but they remain in a stable condition with any “clinical deterioration.”

In a press conference in Madrid on Tuesday, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there was “no sign we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak.”

The WHO chief, however, noted that the “situation could change” due to the virus’ “long incubation period” and more cases might be reported in the coming weeks.

A Dutch hospital announced that 12 of its staff members were put under quarantine after blood and urine samples collected from a hantavirus patient were handled in a manner that breached protocol, Reuters reported.

The hospital staff members will now be required to quarantine for ​six weeks, the hospital said while noting that the infection risk was very low.

Monday, May 11, 2026Oceanwide Expeditions says 87 guests and 35 crew members from 22 counties have disembarked the ship and returned home, and the boat is now en route to the Netherlands with 25 crew members and two medical professionals on board.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says, “We have this under control and we’re not worried about it” during an Oval Office event after President Donald Trump downplayed concerns about virus, echoing health officials who’ve said the disease is “not easy to spread” and adding the U.S. is in “very good shape.”

Sixteen passengers from the hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius that live in the United States are isolating at the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska and two others, including a patient exhibiting symptoms of the virus’ Andes variant, are in Atlanta where they will all undergo health assessments in the coming days.

The two patients, including the one showing symptoms, are in a biocontainment unit at Emory University while the remaining American residents are in Nebraska, health officials say.

Officials clarify an earlier statement about an American patient who tested “mildly positive” for hantavirus, explaining the person was tested twice for the disease with a PCR molecular test and got one positive and one negative result. They are not experiencing symptoms and the patient will be tested further.

Dr. Brian Christine, assistant secretary for health, says the risk to the public is still "very, very low.”

The plane carrying 18 people from the Canary Islands, 17 Americans and one British dual national, back to the United States arrives in Omaha, Nebraska.

France’s Health Minister Stéphanie Rist says a woman, among five French nationals evacuated from the vessel, has tested positive for the hantavirus and all five people will be put under isolation in Paris.

Sunday, May 10, 2026The Department of Health and Human services says 17 American citizens, and one British person who lives in the U.S., have been evacuated from the MV Hondius and are being airlifted from Tenerife in the Canary Islands by the State Department, with two of the passengers in the plane's biocontainment units “out of an abundance of caution” after one displayed mild symptoms and another “tested mildly PCR positive for the Andes virus.”

A Spanish woman who developed symptoms after sharing an airplane with a MV Hondius cruise ship passenger confirmed to have hantavirus reportedly tests negative for the Andes variant for the second time.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu tweets that five passengers from the country were evacuated from the ship and one of them exhibited symptoms after boarding the evacuation flight.

The passengers and a “limited number” of crew members onboard the MV Hondius start disembarking at the port of Granadilla, Spain, at 6:24 a.m. local time, and none are exhibiting symptoms.

British Army paratroopers parachute with medical supplies and clinicians down to Tristan da Cunha, the remote British island territory in the South Atlantic where a man who was a former passenger on the ship remains in isolation after developing symptoms of the virus.

“This is not COVID, Jake, and we don’t want to treat it like COVID,” Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, tells CNN.

Saturday, May 9, 2026 Multiple outlets report the 17 U.S. passengers who were aboard the MV Hondius and have tested negative for hantavirus will not be forcibly quarantined when they return to the states, and CDC officials confirm passengers will be assessed at the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska and those who are asymptomatic will then allowed to isolate at the unit or return home, where they will keep contact with health officials for the next 42 days.

Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles warns residents of her country who do not voluntarily isolate at a Madrid hispital may find themselves subject to “sufficient legal instruments to adopt the necessary measures to protect public health.”

Ghebreyesus issues a rare and lengthy statement to the Spanish island of Tenerife on Saturday, saying he will travel to the island to watch the tightly monitored operation of disembarking the Hondius, which will see passengers transported to the island's airport in sealed and guarded vehicles Saturday.

Friday, May 8, 2026 Unnamed sources told CBS News on Friday evening that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention activated a level three emergency response for the hantavirus ship outbreak, the agency’s lowest level of emergency response that involves the activation of disease experts, their staff and potential involvement from staff at the CDC’s Emergency Activation Center.

CNN cites unnamed health officials in reporting the estimated 17 Americans onboard the cruise ship will be escorted on a charter flight and taken to the National Quarantine Unit, a federally funded quarantine facility in Omaha. Forbes has reached out to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more information.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill says two state residents are being monitored after they were potentially exposed to a cruise passenger with hantavirus after that person disembarked the ship, joining local health officials in California, Arizona, Georgia, Texas and Virginia in monitoring potential contacts.

Spanish health official Javier Padilla says a 32-year-old woman in the southeastern Spanish ​province of Alicante (who shared an airplane with a MV Hondius cruise ship passenger confirmed to have hantavirus) is now showing symptoms consistent with the disease, bringing the total number of confirmed and suspected cases to nine (see map below).

Two residents of Singapore who were onboard the cruise ship during the outbreak and were on the same flight as the patient who later died have tested negative for ⁠the virus, Singaporean officials say.

Canary Islands President Fernando Clavijo says the MV Hondius will not be allowed to dock when it arrives in Tenerife on Saturday and will instead anchor off shore, where passengers will be taken to land via small boat only when their evacuation plane is already on the tarmac. Nobody still on the ship is showing symptoms as of Friday, per WHO officials.

U.K. health authorities identify a new suspected case of hantavirus linked to the cruise ship outbreak—a British man on the remote South Atlantic island Tristan da Cunha.

The World Health Organization confirms that a KLM flight attendant, who was isolating in an Amsterdam hospital with mild symptoms after being in brief contact with a hantavirus patient, has tested negative for the virus, supporting WHO experts’ assertion that it can only bey transmitted person-to-person through prolonged, close contact.

Thursday, May 7, 2026 Trump tells reporters the hantavirus outbreak is “very much” under control and “it should be fine,” adding, when asked if Americans should be worried, “I hope not... We’ll do the best we can.”

Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, CEO of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, says the United States is “not prepared” to handle a hantavirus outbreak after Trump-era cuts to the CDC and USAID, as well as the country's withdrawal from the World Health Organization.

Doctors speak up to dispute a viral online claim that ivermectin, an FDA-approved parasitic most commonly used as a dewormer for livestock, could be used to treat hantavirus.

Oceanwide Expeditions, operator of the cruise ship MV Hondius, says at least 29 living passengers from 12 countries disembarked the ship and went home after the death of the first passenger on board (before officials knew of the outbreak). Those countries are Canada, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States.

Ghebreyesus says none of the remaining passengers or crew aboard the MV Hondius are symptomatic, but that “it is possible more cases will be reported” because it can be up to six weeks before those infected with the Andes variant of hantavirus show symptoms. He insisted the public health risk remains “low.”

A Dutch flight attendant who has developed mild symptoms is being tested for the disease after she briefly came into contact with one of the deceased hantavirus patients.

An international team of scientists is working to create a vaccine against hantavirus, the BBC reported.

May 6, 2026The CDC reportedly tells employees Luis Rodríguez, the American official responsible for public health on cruise ships, is retiring. There is no word on who will replace him.

WHO epidemic expert Maria Van Kerkhove tells reporters, “This is not the next COVID, but it is a serious infectious disease. Most people will never be exposed to this.”

The World Health Organization confirms the number of lab-proven hantavirus cases has risen to five and there are still at least three additional suspected cases among cruise ship passengers and crew.

Argentine officials suggested the hantavirus outbreak could have originated from a bird-watching outing that took the deceased Dutch couple to a landfill, where they may have been exposed to rodents carrying the virus before boarding the ship, the Associated Press reported.

Health officials confirm the deadly hantavirus outbreak is of a particular disease strain called Andes, one of the deadliest variants of the hantavirus and the only known strain that transmits from person to person.

Spanish health minister Monica Garcia says the MV Hondius is en route to the Granadilla port in Tenerife, Canary Islands, where passengers will be allowed to leave the ship by May 11. Spanish citizens will be quarantined, and people from other countries will be sent home.

Three people in need of medical care, including two in “serious” condition, are evacuated from the MV Hondius and flown to the Netherlands by an air ambulance.

A man who traveled on an earlier leg of the ship’s trip before flying home to Switzerland is hospitalized in Zurich with a strain of the hantavirus. It is the first case stemming from the MV Hondius in which a patient got sick after his return to the mainland, and authorities say they are working to contact trace any possible spread of the illness.

The South African Department of Health says tests performed on infected passengers of the the MV Hondius confirm the Andes virus, one of the deadliest hantavirus diseases with a roughly 40% case fatality rate, is what infected passengers onboard the ship.

May 4, 2026The World Health Organization ⁠confirms a strain of hantavirus is spreading aboard the ship, with two lab-confirmed cases and five more suspected cases.

Cape Verdean authorities refuse to allow the MV Hondius to dock at the port of Praia, a decision they said is to protect public health.

May 2, 2026A German national dies aboard the MV Hondius.

April 27, 2026A British passenger is medically evacuated to South Africa from the ship, and is treated in an intensive care unit in Johannesburg. He is confirmed to have a variant of hantavirus.

April 26, 2026The wife of the first victim dies in Johannesburg after collapsing at an airport in South Africa. She was confirmed to have had a variant of the hantavirus.

April 11, 2026 A 70-year-old Dutch man dies on board the MV Hondius and, nearly two weeks later, his body is taken off the ship., with his cause of death still under investigation, according to the New York Times.

April 1, 2026The MV Hondius leaves Ushuaia, Argentina.