As Hantavirus Cases Rise, US Officials Say Risk To Public "Very, Very Low"

A total of 11 hantavirus cases have been confirmed as of Tuesday morning, with global health officials warning that the number could rise.

The risk to the public from an illness called the hantavirus is low, a U.S. official said on May 11.

“Let me be crystal clear: the risk of hantavirus to the general public remains very, very low,” Dr. Brian Christine, assistant secretary for health and head of the U.S. Public Health Service, told reporters during a briefing in Omaha, Nebraska.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said in a May 8 health alert to doctors and health departments that doctors should be aware that imported hantavirus cases were possible but that “the risk of broad spread to the United States is considered extremely unlikely at this time.”

As Zachary Stieber reports for The Epoch Times, multiple people on board the M.V. Hondius, which departed from Argentina on April 1 and traveled to remote locations, including Antarctica, contracted a variant of the hantavirus called the Andes variant.

Three have died.

Christine said on Monday that “the Andes variant of this virus does not spread easily, and it requires prolonged close contact with someone who is already symptomatic.”

An American cruise ship passenger who tested positive on one test and negative on another was transported early Monday to the biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, officials said. That individual is doing well and has no symptoms, Dr. Angela Hewlett, director of the unit, said at the briefing. That person will be tested again at some point.

Fifteen other Americans, including a British American, who were on the Hondius were admitted around the same time into a separate area called the quarantine unit. They have not displayed symptoms. They may be tested, based on conversations between physicians and those individuals, officials said.

Two additional Americans who were aboard the ship were transported to a biocontainment unit at Emory University in Atlanta. One of those Americans has shown symptoms of hantavirus; the other is that person’s partner.

The people being cared for at the facilities in Nebraska and Georgia can leave after they have been symptom-free for at least a few days, according to Dr. Brendan Jackson, acting director of the CDC’s Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology.

Other Americans who previously left the Hondius are in contact with state officials and have been told that if they develop symptoms, they should alert their doctors and those officials, Jackson said.

Symptoms of the hantavirus include fever, fatigue, and shortness of breath.

The virus typically spreads from contact with infected rodents, but officials say it may have been transmitted from person-to-person on the cruise ship.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, acting CDC director, said over the weekend that hantavirus is “not COVID” because it does not transmit as easily.

“I can assure you that the CDC has been absolutely on top of this outbreak,” he said.

“There’s not a great wealth of information,” said WHO epidemiologist Olivier le Polain during a public briefing Monday.

“We don’t know how much it might spread just before people develop symptoms.”

Decades of experience in South America have shown the virus to be associated with “rare human-to-human transmission after close and prolonged contact with a sick, infected person,” Erica Pan, California’s public health officer, told reporters Monday.

But the available evidence is limited.

No indications of a larger outbreak of the deadly hantavirus have appeared so far, a World Health Organization official said on May 12.

“At the moment, there is no sign that we are seeing the start of a larger outbreak,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organization’s director-general, told reporters in Madrid, Spain, during a press conference with Spain’s prime minister.

“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.”

The incubation period for the Andes variant of the virus is up to 42 days.