Acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Jay Bhattacharya sought Sunday to calm growing fears surrounding the hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship, emphasizing that the illness is far less contagious than COVID-19 and does not warrant widespread alarm.

Bhattacharya, who also serves as director of the National Institutes of Health, said federal health officials are actively monitoring the situation and following established containment procedures that have successfully managed previous hantavirus outbreaks.

“I don’t want to cause a public panic,” Bhattacharya told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “We want to treat it with our hantavirus protocols that were successful at containing outbreaks in the past.”

“The key message I want to send to your audience is that this is not COVID. This is not going to lead to the [same] kind of outbreak,” he added.

“We shouldn’t be panicking when the evidence doesn’t warrant it.”

Hantavirus, which is commonly associated with rodents, can trigger severe symptoms including fever, vomiting, diarrhea, respiratory complications, and other serious medical problems.

According to the CDC, approximately 38% of patients who develop respiratory symptoms from the disease do not survive.

Health experts note that while person-to-person transmission is possible in certain cases, hantavirus spreads far less easily than COVID-19 and generally requires prolonged close contact.

The current outbreak occurred aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius, which was carrying roughly 150 passengers and crew members before disembarkation operations began over the weekend.

World Health Organization officials said at least three passengers have died and five others have become seriously ill with hantavirus symptoms since April 11.

The ship is currently anchored near Spain’s Canary Islands, where authorities have begun gradually removing passengers from the vessel. Seventeen Americans remain aboard and could be sent to a quarantine facility in Nebraska after returning to the United States.

“The CDC has been in contact with each of the passengers,” Bhattacharya explained. “We’re doing interviews with them, and we’re preparing to have them evacuated to the Nebraska facility at the University of Nebraska, which is a fantastic facility.”

Bhattacharya said the agency is relying on procedures developed during the 2018 Andes hantavirus outbreak in Epuyén, Argentina, which resulted in 11 deaths.

“It will include advice given to these … travelers, including an offer to stay in Nebraska if they’d like, or if they want to go back home, and their home situation allows it, to safely drive them home without exposing other people on the way, and then be put in the control, put under the auspices of their state and local public health agencies, with the CDC support all the way,” the acting CDC director said.

The seven American passengers who left the ship last month after the first death onboard are now located in Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia.

Medical experts say it may take up to six weeks before hantavirus symptoms begin appearing.

Bhattacharya explained that passengers who traveled on airplanes with those seven Americans are not currently viewed as high-risk contacts.

“The passengers on the ship that flew home were not symptomatic when they flew home,” he said. “Because the virus doesn’t spread unless somebody has active symptoms, those passengers on the planes are considered contacts of contacts.”

“There’s not a reason to do that kind of sort of recursive contact tracing,” he added. “But you do want to make sure that you check them regularly, so that … if they develop symptoms or if there’s other considerations, give them advice especially to reduce their contacts with others when it’s appropriate to do so.”

Bhattacharya added that both he and CDC officials have been closely monitoring the outbreak for an extended period as containment efforts continue.

{Matzav.com}