The hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship that recently sailed from Argentina has grabbed the world’s attention. The disease, which is usually spread from rodent droppings, is not easily spread among people; in fact, “patient zero” in the outbreak is reportedly a Dutch ornithologist who positioned himself in a garbage dump while trying to get photos of an elusive bird species. Many of the patients who were on board the Hondius are now home, albeit in quarantine to evaluate their situation, and doctors worldwide are reassuring people about the difficulty of contracting hantavirus.
Still, this has not calmed the fears of many people who, as Curtis Sliwa described it, “are going through the fog of Covid”, as they break out the respiratory masks and disinfectant, sure that hantavirus is the new Covid. Dr. Gregory Poland is a leader in the study of vaccines and infectious diseases at the Mayo Institute; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Curtis Sliwa and Larry Mndte in the Morning program to put people at ease about the hantavirus outbreak.
Dr. Poland explained that people might be edgy about hantavirus because it is an “exotic” disease they know little about, such as how it is transmitted: “Unless you have very close intimate contact with somebody infected, or have been traveling in the same area where these individuals may have been infected, your risk is essentially zero. I mean, we have every year in the U.S. about seven to fifteen people who die of hantavirus, so this is, number one nothing new- what is new about it is we’ve never had a ship-based outbreak, and I don’t think it was based on the ship; I think it was these individuals happened to be clustered together on a ship- and it ignores the fact that this is a difficult virus to transmit.”
Dr. Poland put listeners at ease who might not want to take a cruise, saying you should be wary of a much more common but much less lethal illness: “Again, if I were booking a cruise to the Caribbean or something like that, I would have zero concern, I mean, literally zero concern, about this… What I would worry about, though, is what we’re facing right now, which is repeated norovirus outbreaks. That’s a really nasty bug that would really put a downer on your vacation plans.”
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