90-Second Read: Hantavirus-hit ship starts unloading passengers for quarantine: Live updates

Groups of passengers and crew disembarked from the cruise ship at the center of a Hantavirus outbreak on Sunday in Spain, where they were expected to be evacuated to their home countries and begin quarantining to prevent further spread of the disease. The passengers will be taken to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, where some are expected to be transported to the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska. One of five French passengers showed some symptoms on a repatriation flight, officials confirmed, which could increase the global tally of cases. Once the MV Hondius anchored near Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, Spanish nationals disembarked first before passengers from France, Canada, and the Netherlands.

The World Health Organization said Friday that eight people had fallen ill in cases linked to the ship, including three who died − a Dutch couple and a German national. The WHO recommended a 42-day isolation period for passengers aboard the ship starting from Sunday and assessed that the virus' risk to the public is low. But they will be allowed to return home, he added, if they can get there "without exposing other people on the way." Once home, Bhattacharya said, the passengers can report to state and local public health agencies. Seventeen Americans and one British national were evacuated from the cruise ship and are bound for the United States, García said in a Sunday news conference.

Government planes carrying Spanish and French nationals landed in Madrid and Paris on Sunday afternoon, where the passengers were transported to a hospital, according to the two countries' governments. If the passengers have no symptoms and no contact with anyone symptomatic, they will be deemed low risk. Any Americans who develop symptoms or choose to be quarantined will stay at the Training, Simulation and Quarantine Center, the only federally funded National Quarantine Unit in the United States, according to its website. The 20-bed unit "provides unmatched quarantine monitoring and care for those exposed to high-consequence pathogens," its website added.

Seventeen Americans who cruised on the MV Hondius are now on an airplane bound not for their homes, but for the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska. In that case, he said, they will have the option to return home, rather than stay at the national quarantine center.