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A Manhattan resident<\/span> who was on the cruise ship at the center of the hantavirus<\/a> outbreak traveled freely after leaving the ship, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not warn public health authorities in New York of her potential exposure to the deadly virus, according to New York City and state officials.<\/p>\n The woman, a dual citizen of New Zealand and the United States with residences in Manhattan and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was one of 30 passengers who left the MV Hondius expedition cruise ship while it docked at Saint Helena island, in the South Atlantic, in late April after one passenger had already died of a lethal strain of hantavirus. A second and third passenger died days later, one on board and one in a hospital in South Africa, but by the time the ship had become a focus of headlines worldwide, the woman was well on her way on a globe-hopping itinerary.<\/p>\n The CDC informed health officials in various states of other Americans potentially exposed to the virus, but failed to alert New York health officials about the Manhattan woman.<\/p>\n There is no indication that the woman intended to come back to the United States or to New York any time soon. Instead, she continued on a multi-continental trip around the world. Her ability to continue traveling \u2014 and the lack of notice issued to authorities in the location to which she might eventually return \u2014 raise worrying questions about the potential spread of the disease, said Dr. Abraar Karan, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University.<\/p>\n \u201cIf she\u2019s on the loose, then we need to be aware of where she might come back to,\u201d Karan said. \u201cSo the New York Department of Health, and officials at the port of entry, they need to make sure this person is flagged when they return.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The traveler, a 75-year-old former pharmaceutical executive, matches the description of a former ship passenger who is now in quarantine in Taiwan, according to local news reports there. Her peregrinations first came to light in reporting by Intercept contributor Jacqueline Sweet, who published a report on the traveler on her personal Substack<\/a>.<\/p>\n The woman\u2019s dual nationality and connection to addresses in multiple states appears to have muddied the lines of communication.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the New York State Department of Health told The Intercept that after raising the issue with the CDC, they learned that the agency had notified a different state of the woman\u2019s possible exposure to the virus. The spokesperson did not identify the state in question, but public records show the woman is registered to vote at an apartment in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Despite her voter registration in Florida, she has referred in social media posts to the co-op she owns in Manhattan as her home.<\/p>\n Representatives of the CDC and the Florida Department of Health did not respond to The Intercept\u2019s requests for comment. Florida has not reported that it is monitoring any residents for possible exposure to hantavirus.<\/p>\n New York<\/a> and other states \u2014 including California<\/a>, Arizona<\/a>, Washington<\/a>, Georgia<\/a>, Virginia<\/a>, and North Carolina<\/a> \u2014 have reported residents with possible exposures, with some states indicating they received notice from the CDC and others saying <\/a>cruise passengers self-reported. All 18 U.S. citizens who returned to the country directly from the cruise are currently in quarantine in Omaha, Nebraska, and Atlanta, Georgia, while another 16 citizens who shared a plane with a woman evacuated to Johannesburg are being monitored<\/a>.<\/p>\n The outbreak took place aboard the MV Hondius<\/a>, an \u201cexpedition\u201d cruise ship that takes adventurous passengers on a monthlong specialized polar tour<\/a>, stopping at hard-to-reach islands in the South Atlantic. The cruise attracted wildlife enthusiasts, biologists, and extreme travelers attempting to visit as many countries and territories as possible, willing to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for the trip.<\/p>\n On April 6, one of those travelers, a 70-year-old Dutch man who prior to the sea voyage had spent more than three months traveling in South America, became ill. He died onboard on April 11, and on April 24, the victim\u2019s 69-year-old wife disembarked at Saint Helena; the next day, she flew to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she died soon after. A third passenger died on May 2 \u2014 the same day that the World Health Organization declared an outbreak<\/a> of hantavirus as the culprit.<\/p>\n The CDC has been accused of a slow response<\/a> to the outbreak, holding its first briefing on the crisis on May 9, a week after WHO announced that the deaths were caused by the rare Andes strain of hantavirus, which is spread in South America by the pygmy rice rat and which can be transmitted among humans via close physical contact with someone already showing signs of infection. Because the early symptoms of the virus<\/a>, including fever, fatigue, and muscle aches, are common in many other viral infections, the disease can be hard to identify before the rapid onset of more serious symptoms like pneumonia and respiratory distress.<\/p>\n In the case of the hantavirus outbreak, as with other public health crises, officials need to walk a careful line between ensuring safety and avoiding panic, Karan said. And the key to keeping a lid on the outbreak is ensuring proper quarantine for anyone with a potential exposure.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause this took place on a cruise ship, it actually helped us detect this quickly, and for now it appears to be decently contained,\u201d Karan said. \u201cBut the problem is that, it\u2019s not like you have a camera on these people to know if they\u2019re not going out or seeing other people. So you don\u2019t definitely know unless they\u2019re quarantining at a monitored center.\u201d<\/p>\n Compounding the trouble, however, is that many of the passengers on the cruise are part of an \u201cextreme travel\u201d subculture whose lifestyle centers around relentless jetsetting. Even with the international attention being paid to the ship and its passengers, a number of people have been found to have trekked globe-spanning itineraries since the outbreak was revealed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The itinerary of the Manhattan woman after she left the MV Hondius showed a complexity typical of such \u201cextreme travelers.\u201d In a social media post on April 28, the traveler said she had flown from Saint Helena to Johannesburg, where she stayed in a hotel before flying on to Hong Kong and then to Bangkok, Thailand. In Bangkok, she wrote that she took a shuttle across the city to its second airport and flew to Trang, in southern Thailand, where she stayed in a hotel overnight before taking a boat to the island of Ko Ngai. Her most recent social media post was from Hanoi, Vietnam, several days before reports surfaced of the former ship passenger matching her description under quarantine in Taiwan.<\/p>\n She was just one of 30 travelers who left the ship while it docked at Saint Helena, prior to the declaration of an outbreak \u2014 setting off a scramble by global public health officials to identify everyone who might have been exposed.<\/p>\n The profile of the passengers themselves complicated the picture, according to Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and co-author of \u201cVIRAL: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19\u201d who advocated<\/a> for more scrutiny of a possible lab origin for the virus that caused the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n \u201cThe cruise selected for these extreme travelers, and you cannot ask for a potentially better superspreader,\u201d Chan said. \u201cAnd if one of the passengers presented to an international hospital with symptoms without the hospital being aware of their exposure on the ship, by the time the hospital would know, healthcare workers could have already been exposed.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\nFrom the South Atlantic to a Global Conference<\/strong><\/h2>\n