Professor Michelle Harkins

Global health officials warning there are now 11 total cases of the deadly hantavirus, adding that number could go up as the virus can incubate for 42 days.

Experts are confirming there have been cases of a rare strain on the ship that can be transmitted between humans.

I am a pulmonary and critical care physician at the University of New Mexico.

So this virus likes a particular cell, the endothelial cell, and it lines all the blood vessels.

It lines a lot of the cells in the lung.

So you feel like you have the flu.

You're sick.

You have fever, chills, body aches, headache.

It caused like a war, if you will.

It's a whole dysregulation of our immune system that is caused by this virus.

That can all progress over a matter of, you know, three, four, six hours and get worse.

If you enter this phase and you really don't seek medical attention, you have over a 50% chance of mortality and you can die within 24 hours.

Some of the first patients that I saw came in talking, they were on just a little oxygen and then rapidly deteriorated and were put on ECMO within four hours.

And it was striking that it can progress that fast.

No, it is really difficult.

Some people come in and you're like, oh my gosh, they're going to get worse and they get better and they're off of oxygen in a day or two.

And then someone comes in that is, you know, you think a young, healthy-ish person that comes in and they're on two liters of oxygen and then they're on the bypass machine the next day.

So it's, you can't just tell by looking.

They may just go on their merry way, and then there's an incubation period.

And unfortunately, it can be from one to eight weeks.