CDC Monitors 41 for Hantavirus After Cruise Ship Outbreak

The number of people under monitoring for hantavirus in the United States has reached 41, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. New details have surfaced about potential exposures during flights and the status of passengers quarantined from the M/V Hondius cruise ship.

Eighteen repatriated passengers from the cruise are in facilities in Nebraska and Georgia: 16 at the University of Nebraska Medical Center's National Quarantine Unit and two at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the CDC said. As of Thursday, seven others who returned home before the outbreak was identified are also being monitored.

The CDC said Thursday that additional flight contacts, people exposed during travel, are under monitoring, though it did not provide an exact number. The agency has not released the travel routes or current locations of those individuals.

Officials say the risk to the general public remains low. The CDC reported no confirmed U.S. cases Thursday, and none of the quarantined passengers are symptomatic.

Health officials have linked at least 11 confirmed or suspected hantavirus cases to the ship outbreak, including three fatalities: a Dutch couple and a German woman. Patients have tested positive for the Andes strain, which spreads person to person. Hantavirus typically comes from rodents.

"I feel terrible — but it's the right decision"

New York native and travel influencer Jake Rosmarin is among those in quarantine. He spoke with CBS News about his five-week trip that has extended to 12 weeks away from home. Quarantined passengers face 42 days of isolation.

Rosmarin grew emotional when asked what he will miss. "I was supposed to go to my cousin's wedding in Italy and unfortunately I won't be making that," he said. "I feel terrible, but it's the right decision."

He described the ship's darkest period and said planning his own wedding helped him cope. "When I was in my darkest place on that ship, we had a wedding planning call," Rosmarin said. "It was so nice to have a moment of normalcy and to not feel like I was stuck in that little box on a ship with so much unknown."

Rosmarin said he is focusing on the future.

A passenger-turned-caregiver moves to quarantine

Dr. Stephen Kornfeld, an Oregon oncologist vacationing on the cruise when the outbreak started, told CBS News on Wednesday that he tested negative. He moved from the biocontainment unit to the quarantine unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Dr. Angela Hewlett, who oversaw his care, told CBS News that Kornfeld tested negative by PCR twice and for antibodies. That makes it unlikely his earlier flu-like symptoms came from hantavirus.

Hewlett called the vacationing doctor a hero. "He is a physician who stepped up when people needed him," she said. "He did help provide care and assessment for individuals who were ill on the cruise ship."