Acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Jay Bhattacharya urged Americans not to panic over the hantavirus outbreak linked to the cruise ship MV Hondius, saying the situation is not comparable to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bhattacharya discussed the outbreak Sunday during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” while addressing growing public concern surrounding the virus and evacuation efforts involving American passengers.
“I don’t want to cause a public panic,” Bhattacharya said during the interview while discussing the CDC’s response to the outbreak aboard the cruise ship.
“We want to treat it with our hantavirus protocols that were successful at containing outbreaks in the past,” he added while defending the agency’s current monitoring and contact tracing efforts.
Bhattacharya stressed that hantavirus does not spread in the same manner as COVID-19 and argued the outbreak does not pose the same level of public health threat.
“The key message I want to send to your audience is that this is not COVID,” Bhattacharya said. “This is not going to lead to the kind of outbreak” seen during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We shouldn’t be panicking when the evidence doesn’t warrant it,” he added while discussing the current number of infections and public health precautions connected to the outbreak.
Health officials said hantavirus is typically spread through exposure to rodent saliva, urine or droppings and can cause symptoms including fever, vomiting, diarrhea and severe respiratory complications.
According to the CDC, roughly 38% of patients who develop the respiratory phase of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome die from the illness once lung complications emerge, per the New York Post.
The outbreak aboard the MV Hondius involved approximately 150 passengers and crew members before evacuation and disembarkation efforts began near Spain’s Canary Islands over the weekend.
World Health Organization officials said at least three passengers died and five additional individuals became seriously ill after symptoms began appearing aboard the vessel in April.
Bhattacharya said the CDC has been communicating directly with American passengers and preparing for quarantine operations involving those returning to the US from the cruise ship.
“We’re preparing to have them evacuated to the Nebraska facility at the University of Nebraska,” Bhattacharya said while describing plans involving specialized quarantine and medical facilities.
The CDC is using response protocols developed during the 2018 Andes hantavirus outbreak in Argentina, which resulted in 11 deaths and involved limited person-to-person transmission.
Bhattacharya also said seven American passengers who previously left the ship before symptoms appeared are being monitored in Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas and Virginia.
He said passengers who traveled on flights with those Americans are considered “contacts of contacts” because the infected individuals were reportedly not symptomatic while flying home.
