An American passenger aboard the hantavirus-infected cruise ship MV Hondius has revealed the inside story of the deadly disease's discovery and his surreal quarantine experience, in an interview with the Daily Mail.
Travel influencer Jake Rosmarin, 29, was ready for an adventure after being offered a free Atlantic cruise to the Earth's most remote inhabited islands. However, the Boston-based photographer's adventure turned into a nightmare when the deadly hantavirus broke out on the ship, hitting a married couple last month.
'It was the man who died first, and then the woman died, and everyone just assumed she died of a broken heart,' Rosmarin said. 'I don't think that anyone was suspicious of anything until that third person died, which was on May 2. For me, that's when I was really getting nervous: the third death, plus two other sick people on board. We found out it was hantavirus on May 3.'
Hantavirus is a disease spread by rats. It is the same condition that killed Gene Hackman's wife Betsy Arakawa in February last year. The Hondius, owned by Dutch firm Oceanwide Expeditions, was carrying around 150 passengers from 23 countries.
The virus that gripped the cruise ship weeks ago was fatal for three of some 150 passengers on board after departing Argentina in April, bound for the Canary Islands. The first passenger died on April 11. His wife accompanied his body ashore on the remote island of Saint Helena, 1,200 miles off the African coast, on April 24. She died in a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, two days later.
Rosmarin spoke to the Daily Mail from his solitary confinement at a quarantine facility in Omaha, Nebraska, after authorities flew him and 17 other passengers back to the US on Monday. 'From the beginning, it was hard. There were a lot of unknowns, being on that ship,' he said. 'We knew before hantavirus that we were supposed to be going to Cape Verde, and we were at least going to be able to medically evacuate the ill people on the ship. By the mid-morning we found Cape Verde authorities were not being cooperative for the medical evacuation. That's when I got really scared.'
He said there were no updates on the situation. 'It kept getting delayed on when these people were going to be able to get off the ship for medical care that they really needed.' Rosmarin said that after several anxious days of waiting, the ship was allowed to sail to the Canary Islands off the coast of Morocco, where they were flown to their respective countries.
Passengers were sprayed with disinfectant by Spanish government officials before boarding a plane after disembarking from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius at Tenerife airport on Sunday. The 17 US citizens and one British dual national from the MV Hondius were kitted out in masks and holding only a few of their belongings in plastic bags. The 18 Americans were only allowed to take one small bag of belongings and were forced to leave the rest on the Hondius, where Rosmarin said the items will be quarantined for two weeks before being returned.
'We got off and were given garb to wear. The only thing we were mandated to wear was the garb over our shirt, as well as the KN-95 masks,' the travel influencer said. 'Once we got on the plane, it was very bare minimum on the inside. There were only a few rows for passengers, because there's a whole bio-containment medical unit on the plane. We were all given a sandwich, a notepad and marker, to be able to speak with the medical staff who were all in hazmat suits. We each had individual thermometers, just in case we were to develop any symptoms during the trip, to take our temperature.'
Rosmarin joked that he hoped it would be 'the last direct flight from the Canary Islands to Omaha, Nebraska.' Despite the harrowing experience and risk of exposure to a deadly disease, plucky Rosmarin said he feels 'great'. 'We're being treated really well here. We're allowed to get packages delivered to us from family and friends.'
For the next roughly 42 days, fifteen of the eighteen who returned to US soil would call the quarantine facility—the only federal center for such purposes in the country—home as they are monitored for hantavirus. Rosmarin is now quarantining for up to 42 days in the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska and said the sealed-off facility is 'so nice'. 'The nurses knew that I've been craving Starbucks so they delivered me a Starbucks iced coffee today.'
Rosmarin, who has about 80,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok, said that when the virus outbreak became international news, he was targeted with 'hate' and conspiracy theories on social media, where he had been posting updates from his trip. 'People online were reacting just to react, there was a lot of hate,' he said. 'But the love and support that I was getting, I could truly tell it was coming from people's hearts. And that's really what helped support me getting through that week. Now that I'm here and I know I'm in good and safe hands, I'm in a really good place.'
The influencer also praised his family, including his new fiancé, for their support. 'They've been holding strong for me, because that's all we can do is be strong for each other,' he said. Rosmarin said although the disease is not thought to be highly infectious, authorities were keeping them in quarantine as a precaution. 'It's never been in this big of a case study, so we really don't know if there's a chance for asymptomatic hantavirus cases,' he said. 'When I open my door I have to open my mask, even though I don't step out of my room. They're taking all these extra precautions so there's no possibility of anyone getting anything from me.'
The interview with Rosmarin was interrupted when a nurse, covered in protective clothing, came to the door to take blood from their patient. 'From what I know, everyone in the quarantine rooms is still healthy,' he said, before hanging up to take his medical tests.
