An oncologist traveling on the cruise ship at the center of a hantavirus outbreak says he's the lone American isolated at a special biocontainment unit in Nebraska.
Dr. Stephen Kornfeld of Bend, Oregon, says he volunteered to help care for fellow passengers who began getting sick aboard the MV Hondius in April. He was among more than 120 passengers and crew evacuated from the ship, and flown to different countries to enter quarantine.
While 15 other Americans are being monitored at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Kornfeld was the only one taken to a separate unit after a nasal swab he took on the ship tested positive for the virus.
“I feel wonderful, 100%,” Kornfeld told CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on a video call from his hospital room Tuesday.
He said there was a period on the ship when he came down with flu-like symptoms including night sweats, chills and fatigue but he said he has no symptoms now.
The World Health Organization said Wednesday that a total of 11 hantavirus cases linked to the cruise have been reported worldwide, including three deaths. Eight cases have been confirmed by laboratory tests.
Kornfeld said a nasal swab he took on the ship was later tested twice in the Netherlands. One result came back negative, the other positive. He's now awaiting results from a new test taken when he returned to the U.S.
“The initial test that we received was from abroad and it was inconclusive in its results,” Dr. David Fitter of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters Wednesday. “So we’re in the process of testing currently and we hope to have those results back in a day or so.”
In addition to the passengers taken to Nebraska, two other Americans are being monitored at the serious communicable disease unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
Health authorities say it is the first hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship. While there is no cure or vaccine for hantavirus, the WHO says early detection and treatment improves survival rates.
Public health officials say the risk to the general public from the cruise ship outbreak is low. Hantavirus usually spreads from rodent droppings and is not easily transmitted between people, though the Andes virus detected on the Hondius may be able to spread between people in rare cases.
The WHO is recommending that passengers and crew from the cruise ship stay in quarantine, either at home or other facilities, for 42 days.
Kornfeld described his quarters in Nebraska as a hospital room with a comfortable bed.
“It’s a little weird being in here by myself,” he said. “But the nurses come in, the doctors come in. I’m on WhatsApp all the time. It’s really amazing how quickly time flies.”
Nebraska Medicine's Davis Global Center is seen on Sunday, May 10,2026 in Omaha, Neb. where American passengers from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship will quarantine. (AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz)
The hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius is seen at anchor at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Monday, May 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Arturo Rodriguez)
NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein started feeling chest pains in a courthouse Wednesday as jurors deliberated in the former movie mogul’s closely watched rape retrial, his lawyers said, prompting the judge to end the first day of deliberations early.
Weinstein, 74, has myriad health problems, including cancer and a history of heart trouble, and he uses a wheelchair. He has been behind bars since 2020 and told a court in January that his “health is deteriorating” in New York's infamously troubled Rikers Island jail.
The ex-producer wasn’t in the courtroom, but rather was waiting elsewhere in the courthouse, when defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo said around 3 p.m. that court officers had told him that Weinstein was having chest pains.
Jurors weren't in the room at the time. They were about four hours into their closed-door discussions, and they had just sent a note asking to rehear part of accuser Jessica Mann ’s testimony — a brief portion in which she said she was “spacing out” during cross-examination — and to review a lengthy prosecution timeline of emails and other evidence.
Judge Curtis Farber ultimately told jurors only that there were “unforeseen reasons” for sending them home a bit earlier than planned. Prosecutors and Weinstein’s lawyers had left the courtroom so jurors would be less likely to speculate about Weinstein’s absence.
“He wants to be here, but he’s having chest pains,” Agnifilo told the judge before ducking out of the courtroom.
Jurors are due to get the requested information and resume deliberations Thursday.
Weinstein has had health problems at court before. When he was sent to jail for the first time in 2020, he was taken from the courthouse in an ambulance to be checked out at a hospital for heart palpitations and high blood pressure. In 2024, he was rushed from Rikers to a hospital and had emergency surgery to remove fluid on his heart and lungs.
Mann, 40, has testified that she and Weinstein had a consensual relationship, but that he subjected her to unwanted sex in a Manhattan hotel room in March 2013 after she repeatedly said no. Lawyers for Weinstein have maintained that the encounter was consensual, and they have emphasized that Mann continued seeing Weinstein afterward and expressing warmth toward him. Mann has said she was mired in complicated feelings about him, herself and what had happened, and was “normalizing everything.”
Her viewpoint changed in 2017, when a series of sexual misconduct allegations against the Oscar-winning Weinstein propelled the #MeToo campaign to hold people — especially powerful men — accountable for sexual misbehavior. Weinstein has said he “acted wrongly” but never assaulted anyone.
Some of those accusations later generated criminal convictions against Weinstein in New York and California.
An appeals court overturned his 2020 New York conviction on charges that involved Mann and another accuser. At a retrial last year, jurors failed to reach a verdict on Mann's portion of the case, leading to a second retrial this year. He is charged with one count of rape in the third degree.
The current jury heard nearly three weeks of testimony, five days of it from Mann. Weinstein decided not to testify.
The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted. Mann, however, has agreed to be named.
An earlier version of this story erroneously suggested that Weinstein left the courtroom after experiencing chest pains. Weinstein was not in court at the time.
Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan criminal court on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in New York. (Steven Hirsch /New York Post via AP, Pool)
Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan criminal court on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in New York. (Steven Hirsch /New York Post via AP, Pool)
