Chapter 1: What alarming report did the WHO receive about hantavirus?
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Chapter 2: How does hantavirus get transmitted to humans?
On May 2nd, the World Health Organization got an alarming report that a ship in the South Atlantic was in trouble and multiple passengers aboard were severely sick with symptoms that seemed flu-like, but more serious. Some cases eventually evolved into a respiratory illness. And as of this recording, Thursday afternoon at 4 o'clock Eastern, three people have died.
And experts have confirmed at least some of those cases were caused by hantavirus. Some passengers have since been medically evacuated, but the rest are still on board, socially distancing. Jake Rosmarin is one of them and posted a video to social media.
I am currently on board the MV Hondias. And what's happening right now is very real for all of us here. We're not just a story. We're not just headlines.
Chapter 3: What are the symptoms and severity of hantavirus infections?
We're people.
We're people.
People with families, with lives, with people waiting for us at home.
I can't even imagine the stress. Emily Abdollah is an infectious disease doctor at the University of Michigan. She's been following the news. I had never heard of hantavirus associated with a cruise ship before. Hantavirus infections are rare, but they can become very serious depending on the strain of hantavirus, which is often transmitted from rodents to people.
In the U.S., there were only around 900 confirmed cases of hantavirus between 1993 and and 2023, the vast majority occurring in the western U.S.
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Chapter 4: What is the timeline of symptoms for hantavirus cases?
35% of those cases resulted in death. In medical school, Emily remembers being taught that people are usually exposed to hantavirus in rural places. The classic example is a remote cabin that's been locked up for the winter, now infested with mice.
And it gets opened up for the spring and summer camping season and and humans are exposed to the droppings and the urine of the rodents and then come down with hantavirus. And so the first thing that I really thought about is not knowing the timeline of the symptoms and how long folks had been on the ship. You know, is the ship infested with rodents?
And as timeline details of this ship started to emerge... Emily had one big question.
What species of virus is it?
Chapter 5: What public health measures are being taken to contain hantavirus?
Because only one has been shown to potentially cause transmission in humans.
Today on the show, hantavirus and why it can be so deadly. Plus, how at risk you are at home and what you can do to protect yourself. I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to ShoreWave, the science podcast from NPR. I am here with Emily Abdollah to talk about what's happening on this ship and hantavirus. Emily, I understand hantavirus is from a group of viruses that come from rodents.
How does hantavirus get passed on to humans?
So typically... The rodent is infected. It's not very much affected by this virus and it can carry the virus for a long time and get transmitted between the different rodents.
Chapter 6: How can people protect themselves from hantavirus at home?
And they excrete hantavirus particles in their urine and their droppings and in their saliva. So most cases are from humans getting exposed to to the rodent droppings. So they'll be sweeping up the rodent droppings and the virus particles get aerosolized.
More rarely, it can come from rodent bites, but it's often being exposed to the droppings that get aerosolized because they get dried out and then they can more easily spread in the air.
That's really tough because people who are cleaning the rodent droppings are trying to do the right thing. They're trying to clear it. But you're saying... The hantavirus can, if you're brushing with like a broom, it can fly up into the air and persist and get passed to people.
Yes.
Chapter 7: What are the potential outcomes of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome?
Yes. If there are droppings in urine, you want to wear a mask when you're cleaning them and as much as you can, wet them down. Because when they aren't dried, they have less potential to aerosolize or go into the air. And we get this from inhaling the viral particles. In fact, when we look at cases in the Americas, from what I understand—
A lot of the cases are in younger people of working age who are doing agricultural work. And so in some parts of the world, that's more men than women who are in sheds and barns and sweeping things up. Okay.
Yeah. And there is one known strain of hantavirus that after someone is exposed to the bodily fluids of a rodent could spread from that person to other people.
Chapter 8: Why is global coordination important in managing infectious diseases?
It's called the Andy strain. And the WHO confirmed Wednesday this is the strain that is aboard the ship or some of the early signs that experts were tracking.
The WHO started releasing some information about the timing of symptom onset. And what's really interesting to me is that the first patient who fell ill had been traveling in South America, including in Argentina, before the ship left on April 1st. The first report of symptoms in that person was on the 6th of April.
Now, most cases of hantavirus that I've heard about and what they report in the medical literature is that the incubation period from the time you're exposed to the infectious disease until you manifest symptoms is usually...
one to six to eight weeks for hantavirus so this person got on the ship on the first yeah and had symptoms at least by the sixth and that's really fast but it's just at the razor's edge and even a little sooner where one starts to wonder that this person was exposed before they got on the ship
And then this person unfortunately passed away shortly after the onset of their severe symptoms on the 11th of April. The next person, who, as I understand, was a very close contact, and I think if you look in some reports, the spouse of the person who passed away on the ship, the second person was first reported to have symptoms on April 24th. So that is several weeks later.
after the onset of symptoms of the first person. And in my reading of these cases of human-to-human spread, it's often when the person is symptomatic that they have been shown to transmit to other people. So given that gap and that timeline, and then the others who have fallen ill, it's been, from what I understand what's been reported, mostly around the 24th or the 28th of April.
That's a several-week jump from when the first person developed symptoms on the 6th of April. And I think you're seeing that possibility play out in how they're responding in terms of the public health interventions.
They're doing like contact tracing and quarantining.
Contact tracing, isolation, quarantining.
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