Dr. Isabella Ekele

And the third possibility is actually indeed person to person transmission from one case to someone else who was on this cruise ship.

And what we can maybe also say about cruise ships is.

So they play a certain role in outbreaks because you may remember that during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also had these outbreaks on cruise ships.

They are also known for outbreaks with gastrointestinal viruses like norovirus.

So this is really something that can occur because this is just a very particular place where there are a lot of people.

They are close together.

They have a lot of contacts with each other.

So this seems to be a certain environment that favors transmission.

Yeah.

Yes.

So you definitely need to be close to a sick person.

We don't really think this is something that easily spreads through the air.

So you really have to be close to a sick person.

So it's very different to COVID or other respiratory viruses.

And I would not be concerned about a big outbreak or an epidemic or even a pandemic.

I think the risk here is to have several clusters of people who are in contact with each other.

And what seems to make it a bit more difficult, that there's a lot

a lot of travel involved, like people taking planes or maybe going on the ship later, leaving earlier.

So I think that will be the tricky part now that is apparently managed by WHO in several countries to really do a good contact tracing and assess the risk.

But I'm not concerned about this virus being really an airborne virus or causing a larger outbreak.