Cruises are like that closely linked to the disease that the highly contagious norovirus is commonly called the “cruise ship virus.”
But a ship bound for Spain’s Canary Islands has attracted global attention for a occasional hantavirus outbreak that has killed three people. While this is concerning, health officials and infectious disease experts say the risk to the general public is currently low because hantavirus is less contagious than other respiratory diseases, such as the coronavirus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It’s not Covid, it’s not flu. It spreads very, very differently,” Maria Van Kerkhove, director of preparedness and prevention of epidemics and pandemics at the World Health Organization, said at the conference press conference on Thursday.
During the briefing, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed eight cases of hantavirus among MV passengers Hondius luxury cruise ship, including three people who died. Hantavirus, usually transmitted by rodents, can cause severe disease in humans. People usually become ill by inhaling air contaminated with feces, urine or saliva of infected rodents. However, the particular strain identified in the cruise ship cases, called Andean virus, can spread between people.
Health authorities in several countries are working to trace their contacts 29 people disembarked ship on the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic on April 24, about two weeks after the first hantavirus death. A Swiss man who left the ship earlier has tested positive for the virus and is being treated, as have two people in the UK He is reportedly isolating himself after returning home. Among the people who got off the ship were six people from the USA.
“The Administration is closely monitoring the situation of U.S. travelers aboard the M/V Hondius cruise ship with confirmed hantavirus” – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – wrote in the statement on Wednesday.
However, experts say there is no reason to panic at this stage.
“It doesn’t spread very well, so I don’t have any concerns about it being the next Covid,” says Steven Bradfute, an immunologist and associate director of the Center for Global Health at the University of Fresh Mexico. “In the past, most of the spread of this virus has been through close contact – people sharing a bed, sharing food, things like that.”
The virus does not spread easily through casual contact, and asymptomatic spread – the leading cause of Covid-19 cases during the pandemic – is also less likely. Available data on the Andean virus suggests it is most likely to be transmitted when someone is visibly infirmed, Bradfute says. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, fatigue and dizziness, which may progress to cough, shortness of breath and difficulty breathing.
“It’s really very helpful because it makes it much easier to do contact tracing and identify high-risk people,” he says, although he cautions that Andean virus outbreaks are occasional and just because the virus has behaved a certain way in the past doesn’t mean it will always do so. “The infections were so rare that we cannot say for sure.”
One of these outbreaks occurred from slow 2018 to early 2019 in Patagonia, Argentina, and followed a birthday party attended by approximately 100 people. Three people were the main perpetrators of the outbreak, resulting in 34 cases and 11 deaths. The authors of the study who followed the epidemic in detail, found that 26 of the 34 cases became ill after close contact with an infected person, including people who were not present at the party. Most likely, six people were infected with the virus through droplets or aerosols.