The American passengers who were aboard the cruise ship at the center of a deadly hantavirus outbreak are on evacuation flights en route to the U.S., the Department of Health and Human Services said Sunday night. 

All 17 American citizens aboard the MV Hondius are on their way home, officials said. Two are traveling in the plane’s biocontainment units “out of an abundance of caution,” the department said. One passenger has mild symptoms and another “tested mildly PCR positive for the Andes virus,” HHS said in a statement.

The passengers are bound for the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center (RESPTC) at the University of Nebraska Medical Center/Nebraska Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska. The flight will then take the passenger with mild symptoms to a second RESPTC site, according to HHS.

“Upon arrival at each facility, each individual will undergo clinical assessment and receive appropriate care and support based on their condition,” the agency said.

Omaha Mayor John W. Ewing Jr. said in a statement Sunday night that city officials have been briefed on the arrival of 16 of the passengers.

“We are confident in the quality of care that these individuals will receive along with the protocols to keep healthcare workers safe,” the mayor said.

The passenger with mild symptoms will be taken to a federal pathogen treatment center separate from the facilities hosting the other 16, HHS said Sunday night.

Spanish health ministry officials had earlier said a British national with U.S. citizenship was on the flight.

The passengers had boarded buses earlier Sunday evening for evacuation flights out of Spain.

Passengers started evacuating the cruise ship Sunday shortly after it arrived in Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands off West Africa. The first group of passengers, wearing masks and head-to-toe personal protective equipment, were kept strictly secluded from members of the public as a small boat brought them ashore.

A medical tent was set up ready to receive passengers in what is expected to be a two-day operation at the island’s Granadilla port, with buses on hand to take them to the airport, where countries have arranged special flights to take them home.

The first plane carrying 14 Spanish passengers left Tenerife on Sunday for the Spanish capital, Madrid, where they were taken to Gómez Ulla Hospital, Spanish Health Minister Mónica García said. Planes carrying French, Canadian and British passengers were also preparing to depart Sunday evening. The passengers will be hospitalized for monitoring upon repatriation.

The four Canadian passengers will be taken to a predetermined location in British Columbia, where they will self-isolate for at least 21 or up to 42 days if there is a need to extend, the country’s public health officials said.

The five French passengers will be monitored at a hospital for three days and sent to quarantine at home for 45 days, according to France’s foreign ministry. One of the French passengers had developed symptoms, and the necessary protocols will be implemented, García said at a news conference Sunday.

The report came weeks after the first death, that of a Dutch man who died on board on April 11. At that point, “the cause of death was unknown and there was no evidence of a virus or contagion on board,” Oceanwide Expeditions has said.

His wife died at a South African clinic on April 26, the WHO said.

The third death, that of a German woman, happened on board on May 2, according to the WHO and Oceanwide Expeditions.

Two days later, hantavirus was confirmed in a passenger who had been medically evacuated to a hospital in South Africa, the company said.

Hantavirus can have a fatality rate of around 40% to 50%, the WHO says, and the elderly are particularly at risk. The average age of those aboard the ship is 65, it said.

Source: NBC