Christine Loescher

then the person could be exposed to the same bodily fluids or excretions.

And I think you can't rule that out that somebody was touched something that somebody had bodily fluids.

A secretion from the lung is a really big one in terms of hantavirus.

You know, so somebody coughing into their hand

And then at that stage, they didn't know it was hantavirus.

So we don't know what infection control measures were put in the ship at the very, very early stages.

So I would say while, you know, all of those things sound very scary, they are all things that are very highly unlikely.

They're all very rare.

And at this stage, they're all quite anecdotal.

No.

And I think one of the things that's happened from the get go when they realised that this was and is, is that there's been ongoing sequencing of the virus and there's been no reports that there's any difference or mutations from what we would normally expect to see.

So the WHO are working with a number of like we do sequence in a number of places around the world, particularly in the States and the UK.

And nothing has come out of that data yet that suggests that this is any different from

than normal outbreaks that they get in South America, where there are small clusters and very rare human to human transmission.

Yeah, this happens in South America.

So, I mean, they've probably had 100 cases in the last year.

So there are small numbers of cases.

And I think the other important thing to point out is, is that if this was something that was easily transmissible, everybody on the ship would have it.

So there was 147 people on that ship and very few people got the virus and they probably were exposed at a time where they didn't know what they were dealing with.

So I think that if it was something that was very transmissible, that had changed its mode of transmission, I think it would have run through the ship in the same way that something like COVID would, particularly close quarters.