NOW THAT MORE than 100 passengers aboard a hantavirus-stricken luxury cruise ship have been evacuated, with 18 Americans in biocontainment units in Nebraska and Georgia, health officials around the world are working to monitor more than two dozen individuals who left the cruise and anyone with whom they might have come in close contact.
So far, all of the 11 reported hantavirus cases are among passengers or crew on the ship, the World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at a press conference in Madrid on Tuesday. That includes three deaths resulting from the virus.
Typically, hantaviruses are spread when contaminated rodent droppings and urine are stirred up in the air and breathed in. The strain identified on board the cruise ship, the MV Hondius, is known as the Andes virus, and is the only type known to transmit from person to person. While the virus can cause serious disease and carries a high mortality rate, health officials say the hantavirus outbreak is unlikely to become a global crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic.
“At the moment, there is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak,” Ghebreyesus said, “but of course the situation could change, and given the long incubation period of the virus, it’s possible we might see more cases in the coming weeks.”
