Chapter 1: What happened during the hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship?
complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Before the disembarkation, asymptomatic. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID?
Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm.
We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning. And we assessed that individual. They are doing well.
Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Coming up on today, explain from Vox answers to the age-old question, how bad is it really?
Chapter 2: How are passengers being monitored after disembarkation?
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Chapter 3: What is hantavirus and how is it transmitted?
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Chapter 4: Is hantavirus considered a deadly disease?
Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us.
You're listening to Today Explained.
My name is Laurel Bristow, and I am an infectious disease researcher. And now I work for the Emory Rollins School of Public Health and Communications and have a weekly radio show and podcast show all about public health called Health Wanted.
So we are speaking early Monday morning. Yesterday, the passengers that were on board the cruise ship that got hit by hantavirus, they got off the ship. And what happened next? What has been happening in the meantime with those people?
So all of the Americans who were on the cruise ship who were waiting to see their fate are now in a containment facility in Nebraska that is run by the University of Nebraska.
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Chapter 5: How did the hantavirus outbreak start on the cruise ship?
It's the only government-funded facility that can handle people who have been exposed to potentially, you know, novel or pathogenic viruses that have emerged. And so they are there to get monitoring and assessment from a care team. And then... Hopefully, they won't stay there for too long.
They're going to make a decision in conjunction with their care team about where they're next going to spend the 42-day quarantine that is being recommended, but they are not being forced to stay in that facility, though I think there's a possibility that some might choose to if they want to.
All right, so 42 days of confinement, that is a long time, and it suggests that what we're dealing with here is something that is kind of serious. What is hantavirus?
So, hantavirus is actually a family of about 40 different kinds of viruses, and they are primarily spread by rodents coming into contact with the infected feces, urine, or saliva of rodents who are carriers. And just to be clear, not all rodents are carriers of hantavirus. You know, people I've seen have been really scared about saying New York is full of rats.
Chapter 6: What are the symptoms of hantavirus infection?
Yeah.
I live in New York City. That is the mecca for rats and rodents.
Because rat poop is always over here in New York City. Rats be running all rampant around here in the city.
And that's why I drink out of a straw in New York City out of every can I get from Pizzeria.
Not every kind of rodent carries hantavirus. In the U.S., it's primarily deer mice, and they are usually found in the southwest of the America. That's where we see our hantavirus cases. What's unique about this is that the Andes kind of species of hantavirus is the only one that we have seen be able to transmit person to person.
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Chapter 7: How does the public health response to hantavirus compare to COVID-19?
Yes, it has spread person to person, but that has been in the context of very prolonged close contact, so people who are sexual partners, people sharing a bed.
And even then, it's still considered rare for this to happen. So this isn't like COVID, it doesn't spread as easily and you can't get it through casual contact like while out at the supermarket.
And because it happened to get into an environment that is conducive for the spread of infectious disease, the way the close confined quarters of cruise ships are, that's why we're seeing such a kind of profound spread within people who are on this cruise in a way that we haven't really seen before. Is it a very deadly disease? It can be. It depends on what kind of hantavirus it is.
But the case fatality tends to be up to 40 percent. I think Andy's virus is 38 percent currently. And that's because it can do things like cause pulmonary syndrome, which causes severe pneumonia that can cause people to die.
Chapter 8: What lessons have we learned from the hantavirus outbreak?
And it also can cause renal failure.
OK, so how did the Andy's version of hantavirus get on this cruise ship? What do we know?
We're not sure. That investigation is ongoing. But I think the most likely working theory at this point is that one or two people who got on the cruise ship were infected with hantavirus on land in Argentina before they got on the ship. And then on the ship, there was some degree of person-to-person transmission.
Prior to boarding the ship, the first two cases had traveled through Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay on a birdwatching trip. which included visits to sites where the species of rat that's known to carry on this virus was present.
The first case was a seven-year-old man who passed away on the ship, and it just seemed, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. And then, of course, two weeks later, his wife got off the ship, or his partner got off the ship, and then she became ill and died. And on the same day that she got off, someone else became extremely ill and had to be medevaced.
And I think around that time, there started to be the suspicion that something was going on that was not just a fluke.
The past few weeks have been extremely challenging for us all. as I'm sure you know.
What's happening right now is very real for all of us here.
We're not just a story. We're not just headlines. We're people, people with families, with lives.
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