Five people leave hantavirus quarantine in US state of Nebraska

WASHINGTON - Five Americans who had been quarantining at a medical facility in the US city of Omaha, Nebraska, for possible hantavirus exposure returned to their home states on June 1, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.

They have been placed under constant monitoring. That was a condition that federal officials had put in place before anyone was allowed to leave the facility, the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre.

Such surveillance greatly exceeds typical public health protocols.

New York said on June 1 that two state residents who were in Omaha had been transported home and “remain in quarantine with around-the-clock surveillance in private residences”.

They remain without symptoms, according to the state.

Federal officials said state health departments would monitor the five returnees for symptoms every day and “maintain 24/7 oversight”, but did not share details about what that would entail.

State health departments did not immediately respond to questions about the constant monitoring.

Of the 13 people who remain at the Omaha facility, some have elected to stay longer, while others have yet to receive permission to return to their states.

The 18 passengers were among a group of Americans on a cruise ship that became the centre of a global hantavirus outbreak in May.

After being repatriated from the Canary Islands on May 11, they have been housed in federally funded facilities for observation, although none appears to have the disease.

Hantavirus is a rare family of viruses carried by rodents.

The World Health Organization has identified the Andes subtype, which can be transmitted between people who have had close contact, as the one that affected the cruise passengers.

So far, no cases of the Andes virus have been confirmed in the US as a result of the outbreak, according to federal health officials.

The 18 passengers who went to Omaha are now past the 21-day period during which people are most likely to develop symptoms after a possible exposure.

Those who left on June 1 are supposed to isolate in their residences until June 22, when the virus’ approximately 42-day incubation period will end.

At least seven other Americans who departed the cruise ship earlier and took commercial flights back to the US have mostly been monitored at home, not around the clock but with daily check-ins from local health workers, either virtually or in person.

Those who were in Omaha described weeks of near-total physical isolation, although they could communicate with friends and family members by phone or online.

Their lodgings resembled hotel rooms: Each had Wi-Fi, a desk, a television and an exercise machine. They could sign up for rare, brief outdoor sessions on the roof, and meals were delivered to their rooms by people wearing protective medical gear.

One passenger who left Omaha on the morning of June 1 said he had travelled to his home state in a jet, alongside health workers, and then in an ambulance to his residence.

He asked not to be identified for fear of public harassment, noting that some passengers had already been targeted online.

He said he was prepared to continue his quarantine for three more weeks – and that he could see the person assigned to monitor him, parked near his home in a car with tinted windows.

Stephen Kornfeld, a cruise passenger and a doctor who offered medical care to people with hantavirus while on the ship, flew from Nebraska to Oregon on June 1 and said he was ready to spend the next three weeks in self-enforced quarantine.

He added that a man wearing a uniform – for a security company, not a law enforcement agency – had been parked outside his home since the morning of June 1.

The car did not bother Kornfeld, he said, because he intended to follow state and federal guidelines and stay home.

“It’s not going to change my behaviour,” he said of the monitoring.

“If it makes somebody out there less paranoid that I’m going to spread anything to my neighbours, OK.” NYTIMES