What people need to know about hantavirus

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]We're joined by CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Celine Gounder. She is also an editor at large of public health at KFF News and she is an infectious disease expert. So we are so thankful that you're here today, Dr. Gounder. So the WHO, the World Health Organization, says that the risk, of course, is low, but people are still really concerned. I mean, COVID feels like it just happened.

[00:00:20]What do people need to know? The way in which hantavirus, including the Andes virus, is transmitted from person to person is different from COVID. So COVID was an airborne infection, much more easily transmissible, more along the lines of flu or measles, where you could have somebody in a room who's infectious, they leave the room, hours later somebody else can be infected.

[00:00:40]With hantavirus, you need very intimate close contact. In fact, the biggest cluster of Andes virus, the one that's transmitted from person to person, it was largely sexual contact. Not that it's sexually transmitted, but it's that level of intimate close contact that you need uh in order to transmit. So this is not It doesn't have the biology that you need in order for it to become a pandemic. And And I appreciate that because I think that taking the temperature down, really giving that context, is very important so that we don't spiral. Um there is a flight attendant that uh tested tested negative for the virus, [clears throat] and of course some passengers left uh at some point they flew back, and there was an infected passenger who later died on this plane that the flight attendant was on. How significant is it that that flight attendant tested negative? This was a big sigh of relief for those of us infectious disease specialists and so on who were following this closely because it is further confirmation that this is very difficult to transmit. So this was a highly infectious patient, you know, as hantavirus goes, Andes virus goes, uh very sick, and the flight attendant had uh relatively close contact, but not, you know, intimate contact with this passenger, had some symptoms unrelated to hantavirus or Andes virus, uh and tested negative. So for us this was further reassurance that this is hard to transmit that way. So, for the Americans on the ship, what's the plan for them?

[00:02:00]And how do how does our government prepare to make sure that they don't possibly spread this if any of them are infected? So, the CDC is deploying a team of epidemiologists and medical professionals to the Canary Islands.

[00:02:13]They'll assess each American's level of exposure. How much were they exposed to somebody who had hantavirus? From there, they will fly on a government medical repatriation flight to Nebraska. They'll go to the National Quarantine Center in Nebraska, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. This is the only federally funded quarantine site in the country. A second CDC team will be deploying to receive them there. And Nebraska has practice with this. They had had dealt with the early COVID cruise ship outbreak and those quarantines.

[00:02:46]The seven Americans who left earlier are being monitored in five different states across the country. And the WHO is saying that at at a minimum, people who were on the ship who were exposed should be monitored for 42 days. Okay. So, bottom line, no one should be changing their summer plans, anything like that.

[00:03:03]You don't have to buy toilet paper in bulk.

[00:03:05]>> Okay.

[00:03:06]>> [laughter] >> Don't stock up on your masks.

[00:03:08]>> Okay. All right. Perfect. Dr. Gounder, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Really appreciate it.