Luke O’Neill on Hantavirus

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The Pat Kenny Show 10 min 2 speakers 5 chapters transcribed 4 months ago

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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Pat Kenny 0:01

The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk. The Spanish government has agreed with the World Health Organisation to allow passengers from the cruise liner MV Hondias to disembark at the Canary Islands, sparking concern among locals about possible infection by that hantavirus. Are they right to be concerned? Well, to allay or spark our fears, I'm joined now by Luke O'Neill, Professor of Biochemistry at Trinity College in Dublin. Should I be worried, Luke? No, no, Pat, you shouldn't be worried.

What recent event involving hantavirus is discussed?

Dr Luke O'Neill 0:30

OK. End of. Unless you run that cruise ship, of course, because that's where it is, you know. No, no, I mean, there's eight cases, three deaths. Obviously, three tragic deaths have happened, you know. Only eight people affected by this, you know. And the big fuss in the media, I guess, is partly a hangover from the pandemic, isn't it? We're looking at viruses.

Pat Kenny 0:45

I mean, I presume that from time to time you do get bugs running through cruise ships.

Dr Luke O'Neill 0:49

All the time. Cruise ships are very confined, as you know, spaces. You're in close contact with lots of people. Norovirus is the famous one. That winter vomiting bug, that can spread through a cruise ship and infect everybody because it's such a confined space. And that's what's happened here, really. Now, it's a strange enough virus, hantavirus. It's quite hard to catch, first of all. It's in South America is where they picked it up, it looks like. And you know how they caught it? It's interesting how it was caught. There were bird watchers on this ship.

Should we be concerned about the hantavirus outbreak?

Dr Luke O'Neill 1:12

Yeah. And they went ashore and went to dumps. Bird watchers often go to... You know, dumps, because lots of birds are scavenging. And guess what's in dumps? Rats. So it looks like, unfortunately, two Dutch people were infected by rats in a dump, got back on the ship, enclosed space, and they began spreading it. That seems to be what's happening.

Pat Kenny 1:28

Now, one presumes that the rats live with the hantavirus. In other words, they don't die from it. They thrive while carrying the hantavirus.

Dr Luke O'Neill 1:35

And I've looked it up. It's an obscure area, this, by the way. I looked it up yesterday. There's about 5,000 publications only on it. There'll be hundreds of thousands in my area, for example, you know. Yeah, there's about 40 different antiviruses. 20 can infect rats and humans. And yeah, rats live with it. It's called a zoonotic infection. I know that term. which means it jumps from an animal into a human.

Pat Kenny 1:55

Now, that might happen, and it does happen. Things like brucellosis, for example, in cattle can jump into vets, in fact, famously were susceptible to it. But that doesn't mean that they will give brucellosis to their nearest and dearest.

Dr Luke O'Neill 2:08

No, that's right. Now, the funny one here, Pat, is one of the hantaviruses, it's called Andes, because that can spread between humans. It's the only one that spreads between humans. And pretty quickly, they identified it as the Andes virus. strain of hantavirus. And that was done probably a day into this.

Pat Kenny 2:23

There was concern that it might be some sort of new virus that had different characteristics.

Dr Luke O'Neill 2:28

Yeah, it was good to be cautious initially because maybe it had changed in some way and was more infectious and dangerous. But pretty quickly they realised, now this has been around for decades, it's endemic in South America, this particular hanty strain, you know. But it does jump between humans. Now, very importantly, it's very hard to catch off another human. It looks like it was a couple who shared a cabin, infected each other.

What makes hantavirus difficult to catch?

Dr Luke O'Neill 2:48

And the doctor got infected, put on the ship, because he was obviously caring for these people. Now, he hasn't died.

Pat Kenny 2:53

He's got pretty mild symptoms. That might tell us something about incubation, because the doctor only came across them when they became sick. So he was tending to them for a few days, I presume. That's right, yeah.

How did the hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship occur?

Dr Luke O'Neill 3:03

There's a strange feature of this as well. It takes weeks to emerge. You pick up the rat droppings. You inhale them is the main way by the way. You inhale an aerosol from rat droppings, right? And then it's in your body. But the symptoms don't start for maybe two, three, four weeks later.