Hantavirus: what we know about the cruise ship outbreak

36.008 - 45.019 Tegan

Aha, exactly. So, okay, let's start with some basics briefly, Norman. What is hantavirus? Where does it come from? What's going on here?

45.64 - 71.854 Norman

Well, nobody knew it existed probably until probably 50 years ago or so. And it's called hantavirus because the first outbreak, known outbreak, to Western medicine, shall I say, was along the Hantan River, hence hanta, Hantan River in Korea during the Korean War. 3,000 or thereabouts United Nations troops came down with a hemorrhagic fever.

72.195 - 91.923 Norman

So fever, bleeding, and it also affected their kidneys, and they got kidney failure, and a high percentage of them died. So several hundred of them died. And it's thought that in fact they might have taken the virus, the American troops might have taken the virus back to the United States. So we wouldn't know what it was.

91.944 - 113.738 Norman

You had this outbreak of this mysterious disease which affected thousands of troops and it caused a fair bit of panic and consternation. There was no known treatment. And it took a controversial Nobel laureate called Kartan Gajdacek—he wasn't a Nobel laureate in those days—who, in fact, was the person who elucidated Kuru—

113.802 - 136.109 Norman

the brain disease in Papua New Guinea, along with Western Australian researchers. But he was the one who actually isolated the Hantavirus and was the first person to do so and discovered what it was. And in fact, this was not a new disease. It had been there for centuries, if not thousands of years, along the banks of the river in the Hantan River.

203.509 - 226.687 Norman

So it's a nasty disease which can be rapidly fatal. And the Andean version is a respiratory disease which... Which looks as though it can spread human to human. Well, in fact, it can spread human to human. The other hantaviruses don't convincingly spread human to human. The Andean version of the virus does seem to spread human to human, but inefficiently. It doesn't do it.

227.088 - 236.407 Norman

It's not like measles or coronavirus or influenza where you've got... A large percentage of people who come in contact with the virus getting infected and then passing it on to others.

236.787 - 241.997 Tegan

So when you're saying the Andean version of the virus, is that what we're dealing with with this outbreak in the cruise ship at the moment?

242.237 - 262.139 Norman

That's what's being reported, yes. Now, not a lot's known about it. They talk about a six-week, you might have read, a six-week incubation period before the symptoms come out. But there've also been reports that it could be down to a few days. So there's a wide variation in what is thought to be the incubation period. And nobody's really quite sure what the infectivity period.

262.159 - 282.261 Norman

So remember from coronavirus, There was a period where you caught the infection and it was a period where you were infectious and then your symptoms came out and then it took a while for the virus to go away and stop being infectious. But that pattern is really not known very well for the Andean version of the Hantavirus or indeed any Hantavirus. But let's assume that it's six weeks.