Today during a press conference on the hantavirus outbreak linked to travelers on a Dutch cruise ship, World Health Organization (WHO) officials repeatedly assured reporters that, though serious, the current situation is not “another SARS-CoV-2.”
“This is not COVID. This is not influenza,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, PhD, WHO’s director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention. “This is an outbreak on a ship and we do not anticipate a large epidemic.”
This is not COVID. This is not influenza.
Van Kerkhove and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said that hantavirus causes serious illness and has a significant case-fatality rate, but extreme close contact is needed in the rare cases where person-to-person transmission has been recorded.
So far five of the eight suspected cases have been laboratory-confirmed with hantavirus. Sequencing on patient samples has confirmed it’s the Andes strain of the virus, which is found in South America.
Tedros said WHO was working with Argentinian officials to investigate whether a bird watching trip taken by the first case-patients before boarding the ship may have been where the exposure occurred. He also said currently onboard the MV Hondius are an expert from the WHO, an official from the European Centre for Disease Control, and two Dutch public health experts.
Tedros said the United States and Argentina, two countries that left the WHO this year, are working closely with the organization to track this outbreak. Thirty passengers from 12 countries disembarked from the ship after the first fatality on April 24, Tedros said, and all countries have been responsive to contact tracing and reaching those passengers.
Passengers should monitor themselves for 6 weeks
Tedros said people who were aboard the ship should monitor themselves for symptoms for six weeks, the outer limit of the hantavirus incubation period. They do not have to self-isolate unless they are symptomatic.
US officials sought to reassure Americans that they are responding to the outbreak.
“Our CDC team began coordinating with domestic and international partners as soon as we were notified of a hantavirus situation,” said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acting director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PHD on X last night. “Hantavirus is not spread by people without symptoms, transmission requires close contact, and the risk to the American public is very low. CDC has the world’s leading experts on hantavirus and is lending its technical expertise when coordinating with interagency partners, state health offices, and international authorities on response and repatriation planning.”
Van Kerkhove said the WHO was waiting for testing results from Dutch authorities who were alerted that a flight attendant who was in contact with an infected person may be sick.
Two people in Singapore who had been on the ship were also in isolation today and being tested for the virus.
