An American woman who feared she was exposed to hantavirus on the MV Hondius cruise ship says she is being detained under federal quarantine orders in Nebraska.

Angela Perryman, 47, said she expected to spend only a short time at the National Quarantine Unit after arriving last week. Instead, she received a federal order requiring her to remain in isolation for at least two more weeks.

According to The New York Times, the order mandates that Perryman stay in the facility until May 31, totaling 21 days after her arrival. She was informed that leaving would trigger law enforcement involvement.

“They won’t let us isolate at home,” Perryman told the outlet. “We’re being kept in a secured facility and threatened if we try to leave.”

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Perryman said that although she tested negative for hantavirus and is not showing symptoms, she spoke briefly with a passenger who later died from the illness.

The federal order reportedly states that Perryman could “constitute a probable source of infection to other people” if she were to leave Nebraska and travel to another state.

After undergoing a medical review within 72 hours, she was told she could appeal the decision and confirmed she plans to pursue legal action.

The National Quarantine Unit, part of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Global Center for Health Security, consists of 20 single-occupancy rooms equipped with negative air pressure systems, private bathrooms, exercise equipment, and Wi-Fi.

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The facility sits inside the Davis Global Center in Omaha, which was activated on May 11, 2026, to receive 18 American passengers from the MV Hondius following reports of a hantavirus outbreak.

The quarantine order was approved under federal public health authority and signed by Jay Bhattacharya, acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fox News Digital reached out to the CDC for comment.

Meanwhile, seven other passengers who left the ship before the outbreak was discovered are being monitored by state and local health departments, according to the CDC.

Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News senior medical analyst, explained that hantavirus can have a long incubation period of up to six weeks.

“The reason they’re watching these passengers so carefully is that the incubation period can be very long — up to six weeks — and when symptoms hit, patients can deteriorate very rapidly,” he said on “The Faulkner Focus.”

He emphasized that while the virus is not easily spread like COVID-19, the Andes strain has rare person-to-person transmission, prompting officials to act with high caution.

The World Health Organization reported that at least three people connected to the outbreak have died, with additional passengers becoming ill.

The federal government last issued a large-scale quarantine order during January 2020, when nearly 200 Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, were held for two weeks at a California military base as the COVID-19 outbreak began.

Jennifer Nuzzo, who directs the pandemic center at Brown University’s School of Public Health, told The Times, “Typically, we don’t hold people against their will unless there is no alternative.”