MedPage Today scoop: Twenty-six passengers disembarked from cruise ship with hantavirus cluster on April 24.

Some are Americans. None are known to be sick, and these were apparently planned disembarkings, not medical evacuations.

Graphic by Jean-Philippe CHOGNOT and Valentina BRESCHI / AFP via Getty Images)

MedPage Today’s Kristina Fiore just reported that 26 passengers on the MV Hondius, the Dutch cruise ship with a cluster of hantavirus cases, disembarked from the vessel on April 24 in St. Helena. St. Helena is an island on the Atlantic Ocean.

Sources with close knowledge of the situation said that seven (Update: the number of US passengers is confirmed to be seven) of these passengers were US residents and are now in the United States. It’s likely that many, most, or all of these passengers left the vessel “as planned,” rather than as medical evacuations. Still, it’s possible that the passengers overlapped with infected passengers, making infections possible. None are known to be sick, but we don’t have complete information. If there are infections among these passengers, some may still be in the incubation period, meaning they would not yet be symptomatic or contagious.

Update: The California Department of Public Health confirms that there are passengers from the ship who are in California. However, according to the CDPH, “there is no information that the California residents are ill or infected.”

Update: The Georgia Department of Public Health states that it is monitoring two Georgia residents, neither of whom show signs of infection.

I contributed reporting to this story, speaking to sources, including WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus. Dr. Ghebreyesus told me that he was in “constant contact” with the captain of the ship and affirmed that the WHO supports the American people, regardless of the administration. (The Trump administration withdrew from the WHO in the first week of its second term). “We want the American people to be safe,” Dr. Ghebreyesus told me today.

While this may be seen as alarming, the transmission dynamics of this pathogen, known as the Andes virus, are generally favorable because they are slower than those of respiratory pathogens like Covid-19. That means that contact tracing and other efforts have a much higher chance of containing the outbreak. Still, hantaviruses are very dangerous, making efforts to control this outbreak important for those in proximity to any potentially infected individuals.

However, this is a developing situation, and we are hearing reports that there are more cases yet to be confirmed.

The full story by Kristina Fiore is on MedPage Today. You can read it there.

That’s all for now. I’ll keep following this story closely and keep you updated. Hopefully it’s contained soon.

Thank you for reading! If you have information about any of the unfolding stories we are following, please email me or find me on Signal at InsideMedicine.88.