The threat of deadly hantavirus is “stable for now,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told social media users.
It’s been weeks since the outbreak of the rodent-borne illness was first reported on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius.
Since then, there have been a dozen confirmed hantavirus cases and three related deaths, including a Dutch couple and a German woman.
Some of the ship’s American passengers were quarantined at facilities in the U.S. South, where they remain under surveillance. Others who left the ship before the outbreak was reported are being monitored in their homes.
“All passengers and crew remain in quarantine and under close monitoring to ensure they receive care if needed,” Ghebreyesus wrote Sunday in a X post. “The situation is stable for now. We continue to remain vigilant and in close contact with all relevant governments.”
The strain of virus that spread on the ship is the Andes virus, the only known hantavirus strain to pass between humans.
After all Americans were returned to the U.S., Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said that he had signed a declaration to “support the development and deployment of medical countermeasures related to Andes virus.”
“This action helps remove barriers to research and response efforts while we continue monitoring the recent outbreak linked to the South Atlantic cruise ship,” he wrote in his own X post.
In the meantime, risk to the general public remains low, Dr. David Fitter, the incident manager for response to the virus at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news briefing last week.
“There are no hantavirus cases among the returned to U.S. passengers,” he said.
Fitter told reporters that the majority of the 18 quarantined passengers would stay at the University of Nebraska through the end of the month. Two others are staying at Emory Hospital in Georgia.
While some passengers say they’re trying to make the best of the cards they’ve been dealt in quarantine, others have voiced their frustration at not being allowed to leave.
“They are requiring us to remain in a locked facility and threatening us,” Angela Perryman, 47, told The New York Times, “and denying us the right to home quarantine.”
Perryman received a federal order requiring her to stay in Nebraska, the paper reported. She lives in Ecuador but has a home in Florida, according to NPR.
It’s not yet clear whether the passengers will be allowed to leave the center before the end of the full 42-day quarantine period. But it may take up to 42 days for hantavirus symptoms to appear after exposure, the CDC notes.
Passengers’ cases will be evaluated individually, Dr. Michael Wadman, the medical director of Nebraska’s national quarantine unit, told The Associated Press.
Part of the reason for the strict restrictions is that scientists don’t yet fully understand how Andes virus is able to pass from person to person, Dr. Carlos del Rio, the International Secretary of the National Academy of Medicine, explained in a Friday statement.
“Evidence suggests transmission requires close or prolonged contact, but there have been outbreaks in which people with relatively limited exposure also became infected. Fortunately, these outbreaks have remained small and relatively contained,” he said.
Exposure to the urine, droppings or saliva of infected rodents causes initial infection. Early symptoms of Andes virus are flu-like, but can lead to trouble breathing and fluid in the lungs.
The mortality rate can reach up to 50 percent, depending on access to care.
Still, hantavirus cases are rare in the U.S., typically occurring in rural areas of the Southwest. Hantavirus also does not spread as easily as Covid, del Rio noted.
“Hantavirus is very difficult to transmit from person to person, which fundamentally limits its pandemic potential,” he said.
