Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Good morning and welcome to The Daily Oz. It's Wednesday the 6th of May. I'm Emma Gillespie. I'm Billie Fitzsimons. As we speak, there is a luxury cruise ship stranded in the Atlantic Ocean after a rare virus killed three passengers. Now, the World Health Organization has confirmed the onboard outbreak is Hantavirus, a disease spread by rodents.
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Chapter 2: What is the hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship?
Em, when this story was first pitched at our 9am pitch meeting yesterday, I was confused because I'd never heard of Hantavirus. I hadn't heard of this cruise ship and I wasn't totally convinced that it was a story for us. But then after pitch, one of those things happened where everyone was talking about it and everyone just stays at the meeting just to talk about this one story that
Which doesn't always happen. And it's usually a good sign that it's something people care about. Exactly. And so then as soon as literally I had to kick people out of the room to be like, it's been 20 minutes since Fish, let's go now report on the actual news. Yep. And when you were just explaining it then in the intro, I was like, yeah, this is a crazy story. Yep.
It reminds me of the Pooh cruise ship. There's a whole documentary about that on Netflix. So this is something that has happened a number of times.
Well, it made me think of the Ruby Princess and the very early days of COVID. And I think that the reason maybe it's captured so much interest is it is very reminiscent of those early COVID days. Yes.
So let's start with the actual cruise ship. What should we know about this?
Okay, so this is a luxury liner called the MV Hondias. It left Ushuaia, which is a city at the very, very southern tip of Argentina in March. Anyone who's ever been interested in an Antarctic expedition will know that most journeys, voyages and ships that head to Antarctica depart from that Argentinian port.
Then the boat travels across the Drake Passage, a very tumultuous and scary part of the seas, to land in Antarctica. And that's exactly what this voyage was marketed as, a journey to Antarctica and not just any cruise ship journey, a very luxurious, expensive one coming in at a cost of about $23,000 to $36,000 per person, depending on the package and accommodation.
Wow, so they were on their way to Antarctica. Did they make it?
Are they still on their way there? They were actually on their way back. So the trip journeyed past mainland Antarctica. It also visited the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and several remote islands in the South Atlantic region. that form part of this archipelago, all these sort of sub-Antarctic regions and islands that have really interesting and rare biodiversity.
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Chapter 3: How did the hantavirus get on the MV Hondias?
There are about 150 passengers and crew on this ship, and they come from 23 different nationalities. The majority of passengers, though, are American, British, Spanish, and Dutch. There are four Aussies on the MV Hondias. And it arrived in the waters of West Africa on the 3rd of May. And that is where the boat remains.
And that's where the boat remains because of this outbreak, which is called Hantavirus. I said earlier, I had no idea. I'd never heard of this before.
What is it? Honestly, I'd never heard of it either until recently, but hantavirus is a group of viruses. They're found all over the world, but importantly, they're carried by rodents, so mice and rats. Now, infection of hantavirus spreads to humans through contact with rodent droppings or urine.
So transmission usually happens when those droppings or whey dry out and the particles become airborne. So, for example... You could be sweeping out a shed where mice have been nesting or where mice or rats nested a long time ago, and then that sweeping of those particles kind of activates that virus, and then that's how some people contract it.
More recently, if anyone has heard of hantavirus and they're wondering why it sounds so familiar, It was actually in the headlines after the death of Hollywood actor Gene Hackman. He died at home with his wife in the state of New Mexico in the US last year. Now, it was his wife, Betsy Arakawa, who died of Hantavirus.
Rodent nests were found near the house and that's what eventually killed her, whereas Jane Hackman, her husband, had severe heart disease and advanced Alzheimer's disease. So that was a really bizarre, tragic case out of Hollywood that kind of got hantavirus back in the headlines, but it is extremely rare.
And so back to this cruise ship, I presume there was one person who boarded the ship who didn't know they had it, but it was discovered on the ship that they had it?
Well, that's the thing with Hantavirus is that the incubation period is one to eight weeks. So what I mean by that is it can take up to eight weeks. for symptoms of hantavirus to start to show. So it's not something you catch from another person who has it, as far as we know, or at least not easily.
So the World Health Organization says human-to-human transmission is incredibly rare, but, and that's a big but, there is some evidence of transmission between people in one specific strain of hantavirus. So remember I said it's a group of viruses. One of those strains is called the Andes virus. That strain is found in Chile and Argentina.
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