As more than 40 Americans remain in quarantine for up to six weeks following a hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship, former patients who spent time inside some of the nation’s highest-security medical isolation units during previous viral contagions are sharing what it’s like to endure weeks cut off from the outside world.
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“I want the people who are being affected by this, who are in quarantine or who have loved ones who are in quarantine, to rest assured that they are in the best of hands,” Dr. Kent Brantly, who spent weeks in isolation after contracting Ebola in 2014, told NBC News. “They are in the best place to be taken care of.”
The outbreak has killed three people and sickened 10 since it was first identified aboard the expedition cruise ship MV Hondius during its monthlong voyage in early May. The 18 Americans aboard the ship arrived stateside on Monday after days inside their cabins, before returning to quarantine in facilities designed to house people exposed to infectious diseases.
Two patients were being monitored at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta before joining the 16 others on Friday at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. None of the Americans has tested positive for the virus, though they could remain isolated for up to 42 days, the World Health Organization said Friday.
Brantly is among the few Americans who can relate to the cruise passengers’ ordeal. After contracting Ebola during a mission trip to Liberia in 2014, he spent three weeks inside Emory University Hospital’s biocontainment unit. The 11-bed unit, opened in 2005, has a dedicated laboratory and HEPA-filtered, negative-pressure rooms that prevent pathogens from escaping into all patient rooms.
As the first American Ebola patient to be treated at the facility, Brantly lived in a “decent-sized hospital room with its own bathroom” outfitted for intensive infection control. He was monitored around the clock, and a nurse wearing personal protective equipment was constantly at his bedside.
He was hooked up to monitors tracking his vital signs and administered IV fluids, underwent frequent blood draws and received an experimental treatment that had previously only been tested on animals.
“The team of doctors that attended to me were consummate professionals and experts in their field, but also just really incredible people,” Brantly said. “I have such confidence that the team there and at Nebraska are completely prepared to take care of a situation just like this one.”
Once he began regaining strength, Brantly said, nurses coached him through physical therapy exercises from inside the room. To pass the time, they played Nerf basketball together and spent hours talking about faith, family and life outside the hospital walls.
“They not only treated my medical condition, but they really cared for me holistically as a person,” Brantly said. “My physical well-being, but also my emotional and mental well-being.”
More than a decade later, hantavirus cruise passengers are experiencing some of the same rhythms of confinement Brantly remembers from his time inside Emory’s isolation unit.
Among them is Jake Rosmarin, a Boston-based social media creator who boarded the Hondius for a “content work trip” and has been inside Nebraska’s National Quarantine Unit since Monday. The only federally funded quarantine unit in the country features 20 single-occupancy rooms, each with a special air pressure system that filters clean air into each room. The building’s biocontainment unit, across the street, can fit up to 10 patients in five rooms. Currently, one of those rooms is being used as an in-house lab.
Since entering the unit, Rosmarin has been providing an inside look at life in quarantine via Instagram, with room tours, day-in-the-life videos and documentation of his first sip of iced coffee in weeks.
His room inside the Omaha facility includes a bed, a smart TV and a spin bike. Nurses deliver three meals a day, but he said he is allowed to order takeout — including Chipotle, which he was looking forward to ordering when he spoke to NBC News earlier this week.
Since his arrival, Rosmarin has decorated one wall with posters of major cities, added a blanket and a stuffed animal to his bed, and set up a tea station on one counter. From family care packages, Rosmarin said he has been enjoying puzzles and a charcuterie board he had to break down into zip-close bags because it was too big to finish in one sitting.
In his latest video, he was seen enjoying a fresh iced vanilla latte that he made in his quarantine room, thanks to an espresso machine he has acquired.
“I can sulk in my bed and just be sad and be like, ‘Wow, I’m stuck here for six and a half weeks,’ or I can be like, ‘OK, they’re letting me do all these things, we’re being well taken care of, we’re being fed,’ and just kind of start counting down,” he said. “If I’m not positive, I mean, what’s the point?”
That positive mindset may be key, given that Rosmarin plans to stay at the Omaha facility throughout the 42-day incubation period for the virus. So far, he said, he has tested negative and is feeling good.
Health officials in the U.S. have encouraged those in quarantine to remain in the medical facilities until that time expires, but have said that patients can leave and self-isolate at home if they so choose.
“It’s the best decision to make for me and for my family and friends and just for the general public,” he said about the decision to stay indoors until the end of June.
Like Brantly, he added that his staff has been “amazing,” meeting his every need at any time.
Carl Goldman, who spent a month in Omaha after contracting Covid-19 during a voyage on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in February 2020, also had a similar experience.
After quarantining on the ship for two weeks, he and about 300 other Americans were flown back to the U.S. It was on the flight that he came down with the deadly virus.
For 10 days, Goldman was housed in the biocontainment unit at UNMC, which he said felt “like a scene out of the movie ‘The Andromeda Strain.’”
The 20-by-15-foot “surrealistic” room was double-sealed, and everyone who entered had to wear a hazmat suit. Doctors did not administer medication, but he was constantly served Gatorade. The blue was better than the purple, he said.
He passed the time by blogging about his experiences and by pacing back and forth in his tiny room, recording 10,000 steps a day. While he could have spent all of his time doing media interviews, he said he allowed himself only three per day.
Once his symptoms subsided, he was transferred to another room, and at least 50 people lined the hallways and cheered him on during the move. He stayed there in a room similar to Rosmarin’s for 20 more days until he left the Nebraska establishment in mid-March 2020 — even celebrating his birthday with cupcakes and balloons from the staff.
He didn’t get to order takeout, but in one interview at the time, he mentioned he wanted a steak from Omaha Steaks. The company’s owner happened to be watching and later delivered steaks for Goldman.
“They cooked Omaha Steaks for everybody, all the people, everything,” he recalled. “So, we got to really have a lot of steak, a feast.”
Now, over six years later, he still remembers his time in Omaha fondly and hopes that the ship passengers currently quarantined “look at the glass half full instead of half empty.”
“Store your memories, because they will be very memorable, but realize that stress is probably the worst thing that you could add to your body right now,” he told NBC News. “Think of it as a long-term vacation. That’s one way to look at it.”
