You’re probably safe from the Hantavirus outbreak, but here’s what you absolutely must not do, experts say |
You’re probably safe from the Hantavirus outbreak, but here’s what you absolutely must not do, experts say
The deaths of three passengers aboard the expedition cruise ship MV Hondius have triggered an international scramble to trace passengers and crew exposed to the rare Andes strain of hantavirus. The outbreak has reignited public fear about a virus most Americans associate with rural rodent exposure, and raised an uncomfortable question about whether human-to-human spread could become more common.
Two scientists working on opposite ends of the hantavirus problem—Dr. Scott Pegan, a virologist at the UC Riverside School of Medicine, and Dr. Marieke Rosenbaum, a veterinary public health expert at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine—both say the same thing: don’t panic, but take this seriously.
A self-contained environment aboard the cruise ship
For most of its known history, hantavirus has been a disease of close rodent contact: a dusty barn, a mouse-infested cabin, a grain shed. The Andes strain circulating through MV Hondius is unusual because it can spread, it seems, between people. But Pegan said the conditions on the ship were extraordinary.
“It’s a hypothesis that the virus builds up a higher titer in the saliva,” said Pegan of the blood test that measures the concentration of specific antibodies. He compared it to aspects of the early COVID-19 strain—which also was christened with a famous cruise ship of its own, the Diamond Princess. Cruise ships, as society learned six years ago, are a perfect breeding ground for viruses. “And that’s, of course, going to be a respiratory venue, and so that’s going to be likely to infect more people.”
But that doesn’t mean the Andes virus behaves anything like COVID. The transmission Pegan described is what virologists call nosocomial, meaning hospital-acquired or close-contact spread.
“If a patient shows up at a hospital and they don’t really know what they have, and then no one does any protection, and then all of a sudden, the healthcare workers come down with it, because they’ve been intimately involved with the individual,” he explained.
A cruise ship cabin, he said, is functionally the same problem. “If they weren’t on a cruise ship in a small container, then it wouldn’t have supported itself in spreading.”
Rosenbaum, who has been studying urban rats in Boston for over a decade as part of the Boston Urban Rat Study, agreed.
“The risk of human-to-human transmission of hantavirus is really low, and this cruise was just like the perfect condition for it to spread to more people than I think it might have otherwise,” she said. “If these people were home and started feeling ill, they probably would stay home and there wouldn’t be as much exposure to other people.”
The real risk is cleaning, not contact
Both researchers were emphatic that the average person’s risk from hantavirus has not changed because of the cruise ship outbreak. The virus still spreads........