The Kansas Department of Health and Environment said that three residents of the state had “a high-risk exposure to a person with confirmed Andes hantavirus” in connection to a cruise ship outbreak.
The agency said that it is monitoring the three people who may have been exposed to the virus “after contact with an individual from the MV Hondius cruise ship who later tested positive for Andes hantavirus.”
The three in Kansas weren’t aboard the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, the source of the outbreak that was first reported earlier this month. No other details are being shared about the people, said the agency.
Last week, officials in New Jersey said that two residents of the state also may have been exposed to an individual with hantavirus on a flight overseas.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said in a Wednesday update that there were 11 cases related to the outbreak, including eight confirmed, one inconclusive, and two probable.
As of Wednesday, two additional cases were reported from France and Spain since the last WHO update, said the U.N. health body. All of the cases and deaths are associated with the outbreak on the cruise ship, and three people have died from the virus.
The confirmed cases were a hantavirus variant known as the Andes virus, which researchers have said has shown evidence of transmitting from person to person. Health officials have said that hantavirus generally spreads from rodents such as mice or rats to people, namely through their droppings, urine, or saliva.
The WHO said Wednesday that it rated “the risk posed by this event to the global population as low and will continue to monitor the epidemiological situation and update the risk assessment as needed.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said in an update Wednesday that it believes the risk to the general public posed by hantavirus is low.
Amid the outbreak, authorities with the WHO and the CDC have stressed that hantavirus is not going to morph into a worldwide pandemic like COVID-19.
On Sunday, the acting head of the CDC, Jay Bhattacharya, told CNN in an interview on its “State of the Union” program that the agency doesn’t “want public panic over this” and stressed that health officials have been “successful in containing outbreaks in the past.”
The latest person confirmed to be infected is a Spanish passenger who tested positive for hantavirus after being evacuated from the ship, Spain’s health ministry said Tuesday. The passenger was in quarantine at a military hospital in Madrid.
A total of 87 passengers and 35 crew were escorted from the ship to shore in Tenerife, an island belonging to Spain, by personnel in full-body protective gear and breathing masks in a carefully choreographed effort that ended Monday night.
The director of the WHO said that confirmed and suspected cases have been reported only among the cruise ship’s passengers or crew.
“At the moment, there is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said on Wednesday. “But of course the situation could change, and given the long incubation period of the virus, it’s possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks.”
Tedros has advised that returning passengers should stay in quarantine, either in their homes or in other facilities, for 42 days. He added that the WHO cannot enforce its guidance and that different countries may handle the monitoring of passengers without symptoms in different ways.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.