CDC Officials Involuntarily Quarantine Americans After Hantavirus Outbreak on Cruise Ship

Officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued mandatory federal quarantine orders to 18 American citizens who had been passengers aboard the M/V Hondius, an expedition cruise ship on which there was an outbreak of the deadly Andes strain of hantavirus. None of the 18 Americans had tested positive for the respiratory virus at the time the involuntary quarantine orders were issued.¹

The orders required the Americans to be sent to and remain in the federally funded National Quarantine Unit (NQU) at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, through at least May 31, 2026. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who leads both the CDC and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) signed the quarantine orders. Bhattacharya is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which was written to protest the government’s lockdown policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.²

Several passengers who had been on the cruise ship had already made arrangements with their state and local health departments to be monitored at home. However, all 18 passengers were informed at the last minute that they would not be allowed to return home and instead would be forced to stay in the NQU.³

Angela Perryman, 47, was among the 18 Americans ordered to remain in quarantine at the Nebraska facility.⁴ Despite federal health officials publicly stating that the passengers’ stay at NQU was entirely voluntary, when Perryman and another passenger attempted to leave, they were handed federal stay-in-place quarantine orders.⁵ Anyone violating the quarantine orders issued by the government would face a criminal fine or up to one year in jail.⁶

Perryman told NPR:

I am angry. I feel betrayed because I’m being imprisoned. It’s a nice prison. But this is a prison. Let’s be clear: I am being detained against my will.⁷

Perryman volunteered to quarantine at home and be monitored by public health officials, nonetheless, she was forced to stay in the quarantine center.⁸

Perryman warned:

If they can do this to me they could do it to anybody. They could come up with a similarly unsupported order and lock you up in the same facility.⁹

Stephen Kornfeld, MD, a retired oncologist from Oregon, complained:

I don’t see why I can’t be home. If I’m home, I have my stuff. I can go outside in my yard. Here, I’m locked in a little room. I can’t go outside. Everything I do has to be through these doctors at the front desk. I don’t want to be incarcerated.¹⁰

Questions About Human-to-Human Transmission of Hantavirus

Hantavirus is part of a group of hemorrhagic fever infections that cause severe pulmonary, syndrome and heart and kidney complications with a 10 to 20 day incubation period and a significant fatality rate. Although human infections are primarily associated with direct exposure to infected rodents or their urine, feces and saliva, human to human transmission has been rarely reported between close contacts through suspected exposure to an infected person’s body fluids. The recent hantavirus strain Andes virus (ANDV) infections and deaths identified on the cruise ship in the Atlantic have been heavily publicized as being caused by human to human transmission of the virus.^{11 12 13 14}

However, several years ago authors of a systematic review of the evidence for human transmission of ANDV published in the medical literature concluded that direct exposure to infected rats or their body fluids—and not human to human transmission—is necessary for Andes strain hantavirus infection to occur. They state:

The balance of the evidence does not support the claim of human-to-human transmission of ANDV. Well-designed cohort and case-control studies that control for co-exposure to rodents are needed to inform public health recommendations.¹⁵

Quarantine May Not Be Scientifically Justified

James Hodge, JD, director of the Center for Public Health Law and Policy at Arizona State University, suggests that the mandatory quarantine of cruise ship passengers in the Nebraska federal quarantine center raises a due process claim.

Hodge stated:

Absent more direct evidence of the real risks that these persons present and their unwillingness potentially to adhere to home quarantine or something less restrictive than being held in a federal facility in Nebraska, there’s a very real legal case that could be made to say: ‘This is a due process violation. You’re infringing my liberty without direct sufficient evidence.’¹⁶

This mandatory quarantine order was only the second such federal order in the U.S. in approximately half a century and the first since the government’s COVID pandemic response.¹⁷

If you would like to receive an e-mail notice of the most recent articles published in The Vaccine Reaction each week, click here.