May 18, 2026

6 min read

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Inside the race to develop a hantavirus PCR test

Researchers at the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory worked round the clock to develop a test for the Andes virus at the center of the deadly cruise ship outbreak

By Tanya Lewis edited by Claire Cameron

U.S. passengers from the cruise ship MV Hondius, affected by a hantavirus outbreak, arrive at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Davis Global Center, in Omaha, Neb., on Monday, May 11, 2026.

Nikos Frazier/Omaha World-Herald via Getty Images

The ongoing hantavirus outbreak carries disturbing echoes of the early days of COVID: people falling ill on a cruise ship from a relatively unknown pathogen, with no validated test available to quickly tell who is infected and who is not.

Researchers are racing to change that. Over the course of May 9 and 10, scientists at the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory worked around the clock to develop a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for Andes hantavirus, which has sickened at least 10 and killed three people who sailed on board the MV Hondius. A PCR test is critical because more infections may yet emerge: Officials are monitoring at least 41 people in the U.S. for signs of the virus, which can take up to 42 days to show symptoms; at least 18 of them are staying at the National Quarantine Unit in Omaha, Nebraska. None of these people have tested positive for the virus since their arrival.

Some other countries have used PCR tests to detect hantavirus, but in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not yet have a validated one for diagnosis. The CDC is developing such a test, but in the meantime, the agency has been using a blood test that can detect antibodies in infected people who are symptomatic, but it can’t detect low levels of the virus in asymptomatic people. The Nebraska lab, which supports the National Quarantine Unit, is trying to bridge that gap by using its PCR test to try and determine if people at the quarantine unit and elsewhere in the country who may have been exposed to sick passengers have the virus.

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Peter Iwen, director of the Nebraska Public Health Lab, and deputy director Emily McCutchen chatted with Scientific American to explain how they developed the Andes virus PCR test in a single weekend, how it works and how it’s being used now.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

How did your lab come to develop this hantavirus test?

IWEN: We are part of what’s called the Laboratory Response Network, and one of the roles for us as a public health lab is to provide rapid detection and rapid response to biothreat agents. We are here in Omaha, where the National Quarantine Unit is located, as well as the Region VII Special Pathogen Treatment Center [a biocontainment unit that can treat patients with highly hazardous infectious diseases]. When we hear about issues where patients or travelers, in the case of the quarantine unit, come to Omaha, our first indication is to say, “What can we do to do laboratory support for that unit?”

Usually our first call is to the CDC to find out what their capabilities are, and in this particular case, our contact at the CDC told us they were able to do serology [antibody] testing on symptomatic people, but they did not have an assay, such as a PCR assay, to be able to test asymptomatic people. So that kind of got our ball rolling.

What’s the difference between a serology test (like the CDC has) and a PCR test?

IWEN: Serology looks for a response to actually being infected—production of antibodies—and that’s why the CDC is saying that they will test [blood] from people who are symptomatic. This could be a few days after symptoms appear.

PCR was designed to be able to test low levels of virus, for instance, prior to symptoms. We know that for [a type of hantavirus known as] the Sin Nombre virus, that prior to developing symptoms, people actually have a little bit of virus in their blood, so we can get a quicker result to say, “yes, they do have the virus” by doing PCR.

Does the PCR test use a nasal swab like COVID?

MCCUTCHEN: This is a blood draw. It goes through an extraction procedure where we’re going to isolate out the viral RNA from that sample. If there was Andes hantavirus viral RNA in that, we would isolate that out, and then we go through a polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, following that to amplify those viral particles in a way that we can essentially be able to detect them. So it’s the same idea as with COVID, just the source is different because it’s a different type of virus.

How long did it t