Angela Perryman, a 47-year-old American who recently arrived from the MV Hondius cruise ship, is under a federal quarantine at the National Quarantine Unit in Omaha, Nebraska, after a possible exposure to hantavirus. The order, signed at the federal level and approved by Jay Bhattacharya in his role at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mandates she remain in the facility through May 31, totaling 21 days after arrival. Perryman says she tested negative and has no symptoms, but she also reported brief contact with a passenger who later died. Officials warned that attempts to leave could prompt law enforcement involvement.
Perryman expected a short stay when she arrived, but the situation tightened quickly after authorities issued a federal quarantine order. The order states it could “constitute a probable source of infection to other people” if she were to travel to another state, language that underpinned the decision to keep her at the facility. She described the quarantine as being in a secured location with restrictions on leaving, and officials told her the order would stand until the specified date unless overturned on appeal. Perryman plans to pursue legal action after being told she could request a medical review within 72 hours.
The facility in Omaha is run with strict infection controls and was chosen to handle passengers who may have been exposed. The University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Global Center for Health Security describes the unit as having 20 single-occupancy rooms, negative air pressure systems, en suite bathrooms, exercise equipment and Wi-Fi. Those setup details are meant to reduce risk of transmission and keep people comfortable while they are isolated. Officials are framing the move as cautious containment rather than punitive detention.
Federal public health authority was invoked to issue the quarantine, a power rarely used on this scale since early 2020. Jay Bhattacharya, acting at the CDC, signed off on the order, reflecting the agency’s heightened concern about this particular hantavirus exposure. Including Perryman, 18 American passengers from the MV Hondius have been monitored at the quarantine unit in Omaha since last week. Another group of seven passengers who disembarked earlier and went home are being watched by their state and local health departments.
Hantavirus can have a long incubation period, which is why officials are keeping a careful watch on those who might have been exposed. “The reason they’re watching these passengers so carefully is that the incubation period can be very long — up to six weeks — and when symptoms hit, patients can deteriorate very rapidly,” Dr. Marc Siegel said on a recent program. He also cautioned that the Andes strain of hantavirus is unusual because it has rare person-to-person transmission, which is driving public health officials to act with extra caution. That rare transmission pattern is what has pushed quarantine decisions into the spotlight.
At least three people linked to the outbreak aboard the ship have died, and additional passengers have fallen ill, according to international health authorities. Those fatalities and illnesses have heightened concern among officials and the public about how this strain behaves. Public health teams are tracing contacts, monitoring symptoms, and using quarantine as a containment tool where they believe exposure risk is significant. The difference between this response and the broad lockdowns of 2020 is that quarantine now targets specific, potentially exposed individuals rather than sweeping populations.
Perryman told reporters she would have preferred to isolate at home, splitting her time between Ecuador and South Florida, but said authorities would not allow it. “They won’t let us isolate at home,” she said, expressing frustration at being kept in a secured facility and threatened with enforcement if she tried to leave. The option to appeal after a medical review exists on paper, and she intends to use it as part of a legal strategy to challenge the federal order. The legal question of when quarantine is justified remains a tense and evolving issue.
Quarantine orders at this scale are uncommon in recent U.S. history; a notable previous example occurred in January 2020 when nearly 200 Americans evacuated from Wuhan were held at a military base for two weeks. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the pandemic center at Brown University’s School of Public Health, noted that “Typically, we don’t hold people against their will unless there is no alternative.” That comment underscores how unusual it is to restrict movement under federal authority and why officials only do so when they judge it necessary to protect the public.
Health officials emphasize that hantavirus does not spread like a respiratory virus such as COVID-19, but the particular Andes strain changes the calculus because of its rare ability to pass from person to person. Monitoring, testing, and strict isolation are the tools authorities are using to prevent further spread while investigations continue. For the passengers at the quarantine unit in Omaha, days under observation will be tense as they wait for the incubation window to pass and for any symptoms to appear or not.
