At least five U.S. states are monitoring former passengers of a cruise ship experiencing a hantavirus outbreak, health officials said.

The hantavirus-hit cruise ship MV Hondius departed Cape Verde for Tenerife on Wednesday, as authorities rush to trace anyone who may have come into contact with the virus.

The World Health Organization said the risk to the wider public was low but added that limited human-to-human transmission had been reported in some strains of the virus.