The deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship doesn’t risk triggering the next pandemic, World Health Organization officials said, downplaying an incident that has raised concern about a new viral contagion.
“This is not Covid, this is not influenza,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s director for epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, told reporters Thursday. “This is an outbreak on a ship. We know this virus. This is not the same situation we were in six years ago.”
The Dutch-flagged Hondius is sailing toward the Canary Islands after evacuating three people in Cape Verde on Wednesday. Three passengers have died, six people have contracted the virus and another two are suspected cases.
But while WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described it as “a serious incident,” it is not one that represents a public-health threat — even in the Canary Islands where the passengers will likely disembark.
The outbreak has triggered an international response and grabbed global headlines in an echo of the last pandemic, when cruise ships became symbols of how swiftly a pathogen could move through a confined space. Still, hantavirus is less transmissible than the coronavirus and doctors say it’s also less adept at mutating.
“Frankly, if somebody had said to me ‘Oh, we’re going to see a hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship,’ that would have been the 100th thing I would have thought about,” Emory University epidemiologist Carlos del Rio said at a briefing held by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, citing cruise ship outbreaks of COVID-19, norovirus, influenza. “It’s not in my bingo card.”
Read more: Hantavirus Outbreak on Cruise Ship Leaves 3 Dead, WHO Says
Hantavirus is a rare infection typically spread through contact with infected rodent droppings or inhaling contaminated dust. Symptoms can take weeks to appear, and severe cases can progress rapidly to respiratory failure.
