In the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, health officials struggled to impress upon the public the serious risks associated with the disease, and how easily it can spread.
Now, six years later, public fear is swirling around another strain of the virus that killed and sickened passengers on a Dutch-flagged cruise ship, including four Californians who were exposed to the virus and recently returned to the United States. This time, however, officials are taking a very different approach to messaging about the Andes’ deadly virus – the hantavirus.
While officials and infectious disease experts were quick to acknowledge the seriousness of the rodent-borne disease, they also emphasized the stark difference between hantavirus and COVID-19. That is, this virus is not easily transmitted.
Public fear of the disease began to grow following reports that three passengers had died on the stricken vessel, the MV Hondius. Concerns heightened over the weekend when officials announced that 18 US passengers had disembarked and were returning home.
On Monday, the California Department of Public Health said during a press conference that four people in California had been infected with the virus, but no one had it. Three of them were cruise passengers, and the fourth was a resident of Sacramento who was on a flight with a person with the virus in South Africa.
So far, all four people have no symptoms and appear to be healthy, according to Dr. Erica Pan, director of the California Department of Public Health.
One passenger, a resident of Santa Clara, disembarked before the outbreak was detected and returned to California, she said.
“This person was reported to our department last week and is being closely monitored by the health department of the local government where he lives,” said Pan. “Two other passengers disembarked over the weekend in the Canary Islands and were airlifted” to the biocontainment facility at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Nebraskans are undergoing health checks, and authorities will decide when they can return to California.
Of the US passengers on the ship, sixteen boarded a medical evacuation flight organized by the US government to Nebraska and remained there since Monday, including one person who tested positive for “mild” hantavirus – that person remains in biocontainment at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Two other passengers, one of whom is showing symptoms of the virus, have traveled to Atlanta and are staying at the biocontainment center at Emory University.
That brings the total number of hantavirus cases to nine, seven laboratory-confirmed and two possible causes, including three deaths.
It makes sense for people to be concerned about this latest outbreak, said Dr. Nicole Iovine, chief epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist at the University of Florida Shands Hospital. Images of health care workers wearing full protective gear helping passengers on cruise ships may trigger memories of the pandemic.
Although this is not a contagious disease, it is highly contagious and has a high mortality rate, Iovine said. Officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that 38% of people who develop respiratory symptoms from hantavirus can die from the disease.
“So it makes sense for medical professionals to take precautions so they don’t get it,” Iovine said. “It’s not something to show off [the virus] very contagious.”
In the US, hantavirus cases occur year-round and are transmitted through the urine, feces and saliva of wild rodents.
Andes virus, a type of disease found in Argentina, similarly passes through exposure to wild rat particles. People who are infected can spread the virus to other people.
Unlike other respiratory infections, hantavirus “infects cells much deeper in the lungs, so it’s not easily transmitted when a person talks or coughs,” Iovine said.
Transmission of COVID-19 occurs when an infected person breathes in droplets and very small particles that were infected with the virus. Some people can inhale the particles or come in contact with them on surfaces.
“That is one of the reasons why it is very difficult to transmit from person to person, and that is why this will not turn into an epidemic,” he said.
Experts say that human-to-human transmission of the virus occurs only through close and long-term contact. Hantavirus outbreaks are rare but it is unusual for an outbreak on a cruise ship, where people are crowded and close together, said Dr. Afif El-Hasan, a member of the board of directors of the American Lung Assn.
“From the point of view of infectious diseases, that is one of the most difficult and challenging situations and where it is easier to catch something compared to other situations,” said El-Hasan.
Experts including Scott Pegan, a professor of biology at the University of Riverside, say the average American’s risk of getting the disease — if not around someone who has it for a long time — is really low.
Pegan admitted that it confuses the public when a health incident like this happens because “you hear that ‘this is a really bad disease.'”
“At some level, we have to worry about it because we don’t want to come into contact with this virus,” he said.
