Why the Hantavirus Cruise Ship Outbreak Isn’t Likely to Become a Global Crisis
Cruises are so closely associated with a disease the highly contagious norovirus is commonly referred to as “cruise ship virus”.
But a ship bound for Spain’s Canary Islands has attracted worldwide attention due to a rare hantavirus outbreak that has left three people dead. While alarming, health officials and infectious disease experts say the risk to the general public is currently low because hantavirus is less contagious than other respiratory illnesses like the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It’s not Covid, it’s not the flu. It spreads in a very, very different way,” Maria Van Kerkhove, director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention at the World Health Organization, said at a news conference on Thursday.
During the briefing, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed eight cases of hantavirus among the MV’s passengers. Hondius luxury cruise ship, including the three deceased. Typically transmitted by rodents, hantavirus can cause serious illness in humans. People commonly become ill by inhaling air contaminated with feces, urine, or saliva from infected rodents. But the particular strain identified in the cruise ship cases, called Andes virus, can spread between people.
Health officials in several countries are working to trace the contacts of 29 people who disembarked from the ship on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena on April 24, about two weeks after the first death from hantavirus. A Swiss man who left the ship earlier tested positive for the virus and is currently being treated, and two people in the UK are said to be self-isolating after returning home. Six people from the United States were among those who got off the ship.
“The administration is closely monitoring the situation of U.S. travelers aboard the M/V Hondius cruise ship with confirmed hantavirus,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement Wednesday.
However, experts say there is no need to panic at this stage.
“It doesn’t spread very well, so I don’t have any concerns about the next Covid,” says Steven Bradfute, an immunologist and associate director of the Center for Global Health at the University of New Mexico. “In the past, this virus has primarily spread through close contact – people sharing a bed, people sharing food, that sort of thing. »
The virus does not spread easily through casual contact, and asymptomatic spread – a major factor in Covid cases during the pandemic – is also less likely. Available data on the Andes virus suggests that it is more likely to be transmitted when a person is visibly ill, Bradfute says. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, fatigue and dizziness, which may progress to cough, shortness of breath and difficulty breathing.
“It’s actually very useful, because it makes contact tracing and identifying high-risk individuals a lot easier,” he says, while cautioning that Andes virus outbreaks are rare and just because the virus has behaved a certain way in the past doesn’t mean it always will. “Infections have been rare enough that we can’t say for sure.”
One of these outbreaks occurred between late 2018 and early 2019 in Argentine Patagonia, following a birthday party attended by around 100 people. Three people were primarily responsible for the outbreak, which resulted in 34 cases and 11 deaths. The authors of a study that traced the outbreak in detail found that 26 of the 34 cases became ill after close contact with an infected person, including people who had not attended the party. Six people were likely exposed to the virus via droplets or aerosols.
