The hantavirus outbreak has been well-handled – but there are still dangerous days ahead | Devi Sridhar

All the protocols that health experts like me look for have been followed. But outbreaks on cruise ships are notoriously hard to control

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

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antavirus: the disease you wish you’d never heard of, as visions of the Covid pandemic flash through your head. I’ve seen lots of breathless coverage and some bizarre takes on social media, so I imagine many people are confused as to what’s going on.

Let me start by saying that this isn’t the Covid pandemic – only Covid was Covid. Previous hantavirus outbreaks have been contained (although none were on a cruise ship). So, for now, the risk to the general public is low – colleagues and I are still carrying on as normal and watching to see whether new infections arise outside the original cruise ship group. Those new infections would be the key step-change determining whether we see further spread and higher-risk public health alerts – or whether we’re at the end of this outbreak.