90-Second Read: American passengers from Hantavirus-hit cruise ship to stop at Nebraska facility before heading home. Here’s what we know

American passengers from the cruise ship at the center of the Hantavirus outbreak, including at least one who tested positive, arrived in Nebraska early Monday for evaluation at a highly specialized quarantine unit. The Hantavirus outbreak was first reported to the WHO on May 2 and remains a low risk to the general public, the global health agency says. Once at the facility, the passengers will be checked for symptoms signaling the early stages of Hantavirus, including fever, muscle aches and diarrhea, the hospital's interim chancellor, Dr. The plane carrying the American passengers landed at Eppley Airfield in Omaha shortly before 2:30 a.m.

The CDC was not considering this a quarantine for the cruise ship passengers but rather a brief visit to monitor their health, an agency official said. As of May 9, three passengers, a Dutch couple and one German national, had died after contracting Hantavirus, according to WHO. Seven other American passengers who previously disembarked the ship are being monitored in five states: Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas and Virginia, officials said. The other passengers will go to the center's National Quarantine Unit for assessment and monitoring.

The virus, typically associated with rodents, may have passed from human to human aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship, the World Health Organization has said. The CDC has classified its Hantavirus response as Level 3, its lowest level of emergency, a person involved in the situation said. The goal is to monitor the passengers during the virus' incubation period, which can last up to six weeks, and to reduce the risk of spreading the disease, according to Nebraska Medicine. Hantavirus typically spreads to humans through contact with rodent urine or droppings, though this strain, the Andes virus, can in rare cases spread person-to-person through very close, prolonged contact with an infected person.

Once the passengers get back to their own homes, they will undergo daily home-based monitoring for the next 42 days, a CDC official said. This outbreak is " not another Covid-19," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed before the passengers disembarked. The airlift will then continue to take remaining passengers, including the person showing mild symptoms who hasn't tested positive, to one of more than a dozen Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Centers, which are regional hubs focused on special pathogen readiness.