The Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday defended the agency's response to the potentially deadly hantavirus, hours before 17 Americans who had been aboard a cruise ship where the outbreak occurred returned to the U.S.

"The key message I want to send to your audience is that this is not COVID," acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya said on CNN. "This is not going to ... lead to the kind of outbreak."

The World Health Organization announced on May 3 that three passengers had died and three more had been sickened by a suspected hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean. On Sunday, passengers began leaving the ship, the MV Hondius, after it arrived off Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands. 

Officials said none of the more than 140 people still aboard were showing symptoms of hantavirus. 

In the U.S., a State Department plane took the 17 Americans aboard the ship to Omaha, Nebraska. The flight arrived at about 2:30 a.m., according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

One passenger who has mild virus symptoms will be taken to a second site to be treated separately. Another tested “mildly” positive for the Andes strain of the virus, and two traveled in the plane’s biocontainment units “out of an abundance of caution,” HHS also said.