A chartered aircraft carrying passengers evacuated from the cruise ship MV Hondius, which was affected by a hantavirus outbreak, has arrived in Nebraska.

The ship’s captain, Jan Dobrogowski, issued a video message praising passengers and crew for their perseverance and calling for respect for their privacy.

He said: “I’ve decided to take this time to thank every single guest and crew member on board here, as well as our colleagues back home. The past few weeks have been extremely challenging to us all…

“What touched me the most, what moved me the most was your patience, your discipline, and also (the) kindness that you showed to each other throughout.”

He continued: “I’ve witnessed your caring, your unity and quiet strength amongst everybody on board – guests and crew alike – and I must commend my crew for their courage and the selfless resolve they showed time and again in the most difficult moments. I cannot imagine sailing through these circumstances with a better group of people – guests and crew alike. Most importantly, our thoughts are with the ones that are no longer with us.

“Whatever I say will not ease this loss. I’d like you to know they are with us every day, in our hearts and our thoughts.”

He said he would “ask for privacy and respect to our guests and their families and other crew members at this difficult time”.

He added that “now, we hope to see everybody safely at home”.

Seven cases of the Andes hantavirus have now been confirmed ⁠among people who were passengers on board the cruise ship, the World Health Organization said.

It comes after France reported that a French passenger evacuated from the MV Hondius had tested positive for the virus.

A further ⁠two of the nine cases are suspected to be hantavirus, including the person who is believed to have been the first ‌one infected in the ​outbreak. He died ‌before he ⁠could be tested.

In ⁠total, three people have died ‌in ​the outbreak, the WHO ‌said.

Four German contacts from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship MV Hondius are being monitored in a special isolation unit at Frankfurt University Hospital, German health authorities said.

The patients, who currently do not have any symptoms, will be transferred to Berlin, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria and Schleswig-Holstein, where regional authorities will take over their care.

Frankfurt University Hospital said the four were brought in between midnight and 1am local time for medical checks and laboratory testing in Frankfurt and Marburg.

So ‌far, there were “no indications of illness,” Timo Wolf, head of the special isolation ward for ⁠highly pathogenic infections in Frankfurt, said in a statement.

American passengers from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship MV Hondius have arrived in Nebraska for evaluation. ​

The passengers, one of whom is presumed to be a positive case, landed at Eppley Airfield in Omaha shortly before 2.30 am on Monday morning. There were 17 U.S. citizens and one British national, who lives in the U.S., on board the flight, Spanish Health Minister Mónica García told CNN.

Australia is set to quarantine half a dozen passengers from the Dutch-flagged luxury cruise ship at the centre of the hantavirus outbreak, as carefully managed evacuations begin.

The government has declared the measures a “precautionary approach” to keep the community safe following the arrival of five Australians and one New Zealander in Perth on Monday.

Passengers were being evacuated from MV Hondius after the luxury cruise ship arrived at the Port of Granadilla near the Spanish island of Tenerife on Sunday carrying 147 people.

A French woman and two Americans tested positive for hantavirus, but experts say the level of risk to the public has not changed.

Dr Giulia Gallo, Postdoctoral Scientist in the Viral Glycoproteins Group, The Pirbright Institute, said: “It is not surprising, the general hope was that no more cases would be detected, but given that it takes a considerable amount of time for symptoms to develop, health agencies have put in place protocols to minimise the risk of transmission to the healthy passengers, and the population, in case this would happen.”

“These potentially new cases derive from the same cluster of exposed people on the ship. Monitoring and quarantining passengers and crew staff is still the best approach to ensure that the rest of the population remains unaffected by this situation.”

Health officials have said the deadly outbreak of hantavirus may have been caused by a Dutch couple contracting the illness during a bird-watching outing in Ushuaia, Argentina.

Two Argentine officials investigating the origins of the outbreak on the ship, which sailed from southern Argentina, said this is now the government’s leading hypothesis.

The couple visited a landfill site during the birdwatching tour, authorities said, where they may have been exposed to rodents carrying the infection.

However, locally not everyone agrees with this theory.

Authorities previously said that Ushuaia and the surrounding province of Tierra del Fuego had never recorded a case of the hantavirus.

Juan Facundo Petrina, the province’s Director General of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, told the BBC there have been “no record of hantavirus cases in our history.”

He stressed that it is unlikely the virus came from his province and the endemic zone for hantavirus lies more than 1,500km (930 miles) to the north.