Seventeen U.S. citizens are gearing up for evacuation from a cruise ship afflicted by Hantavirus, with plans to transport them to Nebraska for medical observation.

Images from the ill-fated MV Hondius reveal the 147 passengers attempting to maintain a sense of normalcy amidst global scrutiny. They have been seen engaging in activities like watching soccer, enjoying tea, and observing whales.

Evacuation procedures are anticipated to commence between Sunday and Monday, coordinated alongside the Spanish authorities once the MV Hondius makes port in Tenerife tonight.

Passengers will disembark the vessel clad in full protective attire, organized by nationality, and will be promptly taken to an awaiting aircraft for their onward journey, according to officials.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Health Department have dispatched a repatriation aircraft specifically to retrieve the 17 Americans, as confirmed by the State Department.

The Americans will be flown to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha. It was originally reported that they would be taken to the University of Nebraska Medical Center to be housed in the school’s National Quarantine Unit, the country’s only federally funded quarantine facility. 

‘We are prepared for situations exactly like this,’ Michael Ash, the CEO of Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement. 

However, on Saturday, the CDC said federal officials will not be requiring a mandatory quarantine and will not be testing passengers unless they present symptoms. 

The 147 passengers on the ship are expected to be evacuated within the next 24 hours. They will offload grouped by nationality and will be taken directly to their country’s plane to be repatriated  

Passengers on the ship are entertaining themselves by watching soccer matches 

A man gets himself a glass of hot water at the tea station. The 17 Americans will be flown to Nebraska and will not be forced to quarantine. The CDC is recommending home monitoring 

A passenger checks his camera inside his cabin on the Hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius

‘It is not recommended to test people that do not have symptoms,’ a CDC official said, according to ABC News. ‘We are not quarantining anybody.’ 

So far, no American on the cruise ship has presented symptoms of Hantavirus. However, if they do start presenting symptoms, they can be treated at the school’s Biocontainment Unit, which is a highly specialized facility meant to treat ‘high-consequence’ infectious diseases. 

‘People should know these facilities were specifically designed to prevent exposure to the public. There is no risk to the community from people being cared for in these units,’ Ash said. 

The National Quarantine Unit has 20 rooms that employ individual negative pressure systems and has its own en suite bathrooms. Patients would have had access to WiFi and exercise equipment. 

However, now the government is recommending home monitoring and to limit their activity outside the house. 

The National Quarantine Unit will be available for the passengers to use. 

In addition, the CDC is alerting US doctors and hospitals to be aware of a potential surge in Hantavirus cases across the country that stem from the cruise ship. 

However, officials are still saying an outbreak in the US is extremely low.  

Others are reading the news to pass the time. So far, no passenger on the ship is presenting symptoms 

Others are sightseeing on the ship. So far three passengers have died on the ship, including a Dutch couple believed to have brought the virus on board after bird watching 

Passengers on the the Hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat during their voyage to Spain’s port of Tenerife

The passengers will also not have contact with civilians on the Canary Islands, Virginia Balcones, the secretary general of civil protection, said. 

‘All the areas they are going to travel through are going to be isolated,’ she said. 

Prior to leaving the ship, the passengers will be evaluated to check if they are presenting symptoms. None of the passengers currently on board are experiencing symptoms. 

The CDC has sent a team of epidemiologists and medical professionals to ‘conduct an exposure risk assessment for each American passenger.’ Crew members were pictured waiting to be interviewed by epidemiologists on the ship on Wednesday.

So far, nine cases have stemmed from the cruise ship, including three deaths. 

It is suspected the Dutch couple who died may have brought the virus on board, as they were bird watching in many areas that carry the Andes strain, which is the only one that is transmissible between humans. 

Hantavirus, which has a 40 percent mortality rate, usually spreads by inhalation of contaminated rodent droppings and may be transmitted from person to person, though that is rare, according to the World Health Organization, whose top epidemic expert said the risk to the public is low. 

Several Americans are already being monitored in the States after it was revealed a dozen passengers left the ship earlier in the journey. 

Crew members of the Hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait to be interviewed by epidemiologists who went aboard the vessel Wednesday

A tent has been set up in Tenerife to receive the passengers. Passengers will be evaluated for symptoms when they leave the vessel

Six disembarked MV Hondius on April 24 on the island of St Helena, 13 days following the first death on board, operator Oceanwide Expeditions revealed on Thursday.

The Arizona Department of Health Services confirmed it was notified by Oceanwide about one resident who had been on the ship.

In California, the Department of Public Health said it was alerted by the CDC about residents who were on board.

New Jersey became the sixth state monitoring for Hantavirus after a resident may have been exposed on a plane.  

This article is the first installment in a series exploring the hurdles the NATO alliance faces.

NATO has evolved into an “overextended framework” overly reliant on U.S. military might, as former senior national security advisor Keith Kellogg expressed to Fox News Digital.

In light of President Donald Trump’s insistence that NATO members increase their defense spending—alongside his directive to withdraw 5,000 American troops from Germany and potential reductions in Spain and Italy—a more profound issue surfaces within the alliance. Despite years of growth in European defense budgets, NATO remains significantly reliant on U.S. military resources, including missile defense systems, intelligence operations, logistics, and nuclear deterrence.

This widening chasm between political promises and tangible military strength is prompting calls for structural reforms within NATO, as the alliance faces rising threats from Russia and persistent instability in the Middle East.

The disparity within NATO isn’t just hypothetical, nor is it a recent development, explained retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg to Fox News Digital. Reflecting on discussions from Trump’s first term regarding NATO’s trajectory, Kellogg recounted, “I told the president… perhaps you should consider a tiered approach to NATO.” He advocated for the creation of a renewed defensive strategy with Europe, suggesting a “new NATO” to better align defense efforts.

Kellogg added the alliance has expanded politically but not militarily — creating what he sees as a growing gap between commitments and real capability.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, President Donald Trump and Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer pose during the NATO Heads of State and Government summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25, 2025. (Ben Stansall/Pool/Reuters)

“You started with 12, and you went to 32, and in the process, I think you diluted the impact,” he argued, calling today’s NATO “a very bloated architecture.”

“They haven’t put the money into defense. Their defense industry and defense forces have atrophied. When you look at the Brits right now, they could barely deploy forces: they have two aircraft carriers, both under maintenance. Their brigades are like one out of six that work. And you just look at the capability, it’s just not there. So I think we need to realize that and say, well, we need something different,” Kellogg, who is the co-chair of the Center for American Security at the America First Foreign Policy Institute, told Fox News Digital.

But not everyone agrees the alliance is losing relevance.

“It has never been more relevant,” said John R. Deni, a research professor at the U.S. Army War College, who says NATO remains central to U.S. national security.

“The reason for that is twofold,” he said. “One, it’s our comparative advantage versus the Chinese and the Russians… they don’t have anything like this.”

“And the second reason… NATO underwrites the security and stability of our most important trade and investment relationship,” he added, referring to economic ties between North America and Europe.

NATO chiefs of defense hold a meeting in Brussels on Aug. 20, 2025, with screens displaying allied leaders joining remotely to discuss Ukraine. (Fox News)

Dependence: Design or Weakness?

By around 2010, the United States accounted for roughly 65% to 70% of NATO defense spending, according to analysis provided by Barak Seener from the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank.

“They’ve always been dependent on the U.S.,” Kellogg said of the European allies.

“The allies overall rely upon one another for deterrence and defense by design,” Deni said, explaining that alliances exist to “pool their resources” and “aggregate their individual strengths.”

Deni pointed to ground forces as a clear example of what the U.S. gains from the alliance, noting that “there are far more allied mechanized infantry forces on the ground than there are Americans.”

Still, he acknowledged that reliance has at times gone too far.

“In the past… it was fair to say that the European allies were overly reliant upon the Americans for conventional defense,” he said, pointing to the 2000s.

That, he said, was partly driven by U.S. priorities — as Washington pushed European allies to focus on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq rather than territorial defense.

A Polish Army soldier sits in a tank as a NATO flag flies behind during the NATO Noble Jump VJTF exercises on June 18, 2015, in Zagan, Poland. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Seener describes NATO as “formally collective, but functionally asymmetric,” with the U.S. providing a disproportionate share of “high-end capabilities.”

That asymmetry is most visible in nuclear deterrence.

Seener said the U.S. provides the overwhelming majority of NATO’s nuclear arsenal — including intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched systems and strategic bombers — meaning deterrence ultimately relies on the assumption of U.S. retaliation.

A NATO official told Fox News Digital that, “The U.S. nuclear deterrent cannot be replaced, but it is clear that Europe needs to step up. There’s no question. There needs to be a better balance when it comes to our defense and security. Both because we see the vital role the U.S. plays around the world and the resources that it demands, and also because it is only fair.”

“The good news,” the official added, “is that the Allies are doing exactly that. They are stepping up, working together — and with the U.S. — to ensure we collectively have what we need to deter and defend one billion people living across the Euro-Atlantic area.”

Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters of the U.S. Army 12th Combat Aviation Brigade fly over a Lithuanian Vilkas infantry fighting vehicle during the Allied Spirit 25 military exercise near Hohenfels, Germany, on March 12, 2025.

The Systems NATO Cannot Replace

Beyond nuclear weapons, the dependence runs through the alliance’s operational backbone.

Seener pointed to U.S.-provided intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — as well as logistics and command systems — as essential to NATO operations.

“Without U.S. intelligence and surveillance, NATO loses situational awareness and early warning capabilities,” Seener said, adding, “So that means that Russia, for example, can attack Europe. And theoretically, if there’s no NATO and the U.S. is not involved, Europe would not be aware, or it would take it too long to be able to defend itself.”

Kellogg also says that much of Europe’s military capability falls short of top-tier systems.

“For the most part, their equipment, if you had to grade it A, B, C, D, E, F, they’re kind of like B players or C players,” he said. “It’s not the first line of work.”

He pointed to air and missile defense as a key gap, noting that while European countries rely on U.S.-made systems such as Patriot and THAAD, “they don’t have a system that’s comparable.”

Kellogg attributed that to years of underinvestment, saying European defense industries “have atrophied,” adding that the United States is also now “relearning that as well.”

President Donald Trump and Poland’s President Andrzej Duda talk during a working lunch at the NATO leaders summit in Watford, Britain, on Dec. 4, 2019. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Deni said the picture today is more mixed.

“Alliance defense spending has been up… and has spiked far more after 2022,” he said, pointing to Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 as a turning point.

But he cautioned that capability gains take time, noting that many improvements are still years away from full deployment.

Deni pointed to recent European purchases of U.S. systems as evidence of growing capability, noting that countries including Poland, Romania, Norway and Denmark are acquiring the F-35 fighter jet from the U.S.

“You can’t build an F-35 overnight,” he said, adding that many of these improvements will take years to fully materialize.

A NATO official told Fox News Digital the alliance “needs to move further and faster” to meet growing threats, pointing to new capability targets agreed by defense ministers in June 2025.

Keith Kellogg speaks during the Warsaw Security Forum on Sept. 30, 2025, in Poland. (Marek Antoni Iwanczuk/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The official said priorities include air and missile defense, long-range weapons, logistics and large land forces, noting that while details remain classified, plans call for a fivefold increase in air and missile defense, “thousands more” armored vehicles and tanks, and “millions more” artillery shells. NATO also aims to double key enabling capabilities such as logistics, transportation and medical support.

The official added that allies are increasing investments in warships, aircraft, drones, long-range missiles, as well as space and cyber capabilities, while boosting readiness and modernizing command and control.

“These targets are now included in national plans,” the official said, adding that allies must demonstrate how they will meet them through sustained defense spending and capability development.

The NATO official also noted that European allies lead multinational forces across Central and Eastern Europe, while the U.S. and Canada serve as framework nations in Poland and Latvia, alongside ongoing air policing missions and NATO’s KFOR operation in Kosovo.

A Swedish Air Force JAS 39 Gripen fighter aircraft takes off from southern Sweden on April 2, 2011. (AP Photo/Scanpix/Patric Soderstrom, File)

What happens if the U.S. is stretched?

Kellogg’s warning is direct: NATO’s deterrence depends on U.S. presence.

“The one you always have to worry about… is Russia,” Kellogg, who was Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia in 2025, said.

If U.S. forces are tied down elsewhere, NATO could face serious strain — particularly in areas like intelligence and logistics.

For Kellogg, the danger is delay. “We won’t know until it happens,” he said. “And then you won’t be able to respond to it.”

Deni, however, said the alliance remains a strategic asset — not a liability.

A NATO military force stands guard outside the World Forum in The Hague ahead of the two-day NATO summit on June 22, 2025. (Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP)

The question, he suggests, is not whether NATO still works. It is whether allies can adapt fast enough to keep it working.