Hantavirus teaching us to ‘take appropriate precautions without freaking out’: former NIH official

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]We turn now to the deadly HANA virus outbreak. 18 passengers aboard the cruise ship at the center of it are now back in the United States, including one who tested positive for the disease, but is not showing any symptoms so far. 16 of the passengers are currently being evaluated at a highly specialized quarantine facility in Nebraska where they will stay in isolation for the next few days. Another passenger who tested negative for the disease but who's showing possible symptoms was transported to Atlanta's Emory University for further assessment along with her partner. Officials earlier today saying the risk to the public remains low. Take a listen to that.

[00:00:39]>> Let me be clear. Let me be crystal clear. The risk of hunter virus to the general public remains very very low.

[00:00:47]The Andes variant of this virus does not spread easily and it requires prolonged close contact with someone who is already symptomatic. Even so, we have taken this situation very seriously from the very start.

[00:01:02]>> Also earlier today, President Trump briefly addressed the outbreak.

[00:01:07]>> I hope it's fine. All I can do is everything that a president can do, which is some which is actually somewhat limited. But uh it seems like it is not uh easy to spread.

[00:01:21]>> Joining me now is NBC News national correspondent Aaron Gilchrist outside Emory University in Atlanta and NBC News correspondent Danielle Hamjen who is in the Canary Islands where that cruise ship was disembarking more passengers earlier today. Aarin, I want to start at Emory University where you are right now. So, what do we know about these passengers and why they didn't head to the Nebraska facility with most of the others?

[00:01:46]>> Well, I can tell you that all the passengers, the 18 were on the same plane from overseas uh coming back here to the United States. And the reason that you had two of them come here to Atlanta really is just a a logist logistics issue, a capacity issue. We know that two of the people on that plane on that aircraft uh were put into the bioontainment uh unit on the plane because they were showing symptoms. So, one of those people went to Nebraska or stayed in Nebraska, I should say. The other person was brought here to Atlanta to one of the three highly specialized facilities that exists in this country.

[00:02:21]Uh the idea being that they can deal with the people who have symptoms at the two separate facilities. uh and if some of the 16 other people in Nebraska start to develop more or start to develop symptoms or become uh confirmed cases of haunt virus, that facility wouldn't be overwhelmed trying to treat them and there would still be more space here in Atlanta as well. And so that really explains why you had the two facilities come into play here. I can tell you that the two people who are here in Atlanta are a couple uh one of them was showing symptoms, one was not and as best we know at this point that is still the case. Uh so one is in a setting where they can be monitored. The other is in a setting where if necessary they can be treated. I want you to hear from federal health officials when they told us about uh this virus and how it is spread for folks who are here in the United States and are curious about that. Listen, >> typically we're talking about exposure to specifically to body bodily fluids and then that could include things like saliva. So if you're sharing eating utensils, um kissing, touching, those type of things. It can also mean um just being really really close to that that person for a fairly long period of time.

[00:03:24]So we're we're calling that six right now six feet for at least a cumulative number of 15 minutes.

[00:03:33]And Monica, the point that was stressed to me today when I talked to an epidemiologist here at Emory University, not connected to the care of the passengers here, but she said that the risk of this virus spreading uh to more people is extremely low here in the United States, uh given what the the science tells us right now about haunt virus. Monica >> Aaron Gilchrist, thank you. I know there have been so many questions about that and there will be more in the days to come. Danielle, turning to you now.

[00:04:01]There were more evacuations right from the ship before it departed the Canary Islands for the Netherlands. But what can you tell us about those evacuations?

[00:04:09]And what even happens to this ship now?

[00:04:14]>> Yeah, Monica. Well, all the passengers on board now are either in their home countries or on their way there. So, where the Spanish authorities are concerned, this is mission accomplished.

[00:04:25]They are breathing a sigh of relief tonight. The majority of the passengers disembarked yesterday and it was a very complex, very carefully coordinated uh evacuation process. The remaining passengers were evacuated today. But I have to say throughout the weekend, Monica, officials were had their eye on the weather because they knew that there was a weather system coming in that could potentially delay the evacuation, which is exactly what happened today.

[00:04:53]Suddenly this afternoon, the weather shifted. the winds became very strong.

[00:04:58]So strong in fact that they could not uh they could not disembark on the tugboats that went to the ship which had been done all day yesterday. And so the ship briefly had to dock as you can see there on the screen. And six remaining passengers got off as well as 19 crew members and three doctors. You can see them waving there from the bus. They boarded the bus almost immediately as soon as they set foot on land. went straight for the airport, which is about a 10-minute drive. They were hosed down, decontaminated, and both flights, repatriation flights, headed towards the Netherlands. For some of the Australian passengers who were there today, they will quarantine in the Netherlands and then go off to Australia. What happens to the ship? Well, it is now on its way to the Netherlands with crew members and the body of one of the deceased passengers.

[00:05:47]Get to the Netherlands where it will be disinfected and decontaminated. Monica >> and Danielle. In addition to that American that we talked about who did test positive, a French woman also has tested positive, we understand, and she's been hospitalized after she was evacuated from the ship. So, what more do we know about her condition?

[00:06:08]She was asymptomatic on the on the ship.

[00:06:12]In fact, they could not conduct PCR tests. They just didn't have the capabilities to do so. But staff and and the doctors on board would report every 12 hours an update uh on the passengers conditions and there were no symptoms on the ship. Now yesterday within hours the French prime minister posted uh um uh said online that one of the five French evacuees began developing the symptoms in the on the flight back to Paris. She developed a fever this morning.

[00:06:42]confirmation she tested positive and her condition has since deteriorated. But I have to say, Monica, just in the past couple of hours or so, we received news that now one of the Spaniards who got off yesterday has now also tested positive. They were the first ones to get off. They flew straight to Madrid quarantining in a military hospital. Um this person we understand has not shown any symptoms but additional tests will be done or will be done um and the results will be known later this evening. So once again not only uh someone testing positive in France but as well here in Spain.

[00:07:20]>> Danielle Hamjen, you have been working around the clock on this bringing us all these developments. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

[00:07:26]>> Joining me now is Dr. Jeannie Morazzo, the chief executive officer of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

[00:07:33]She also served as a top official at the National Institutes of Health, but was fired after she filed a whistleblower complaint over the department's vaccine policies and has since sued the Trump administration. Thank you so much for your time today, doctor. I do want to start with just that number of infections that we've seen so far. What do you make of this particular version of the virus? Is it textbook or is it something different?

[00:07:59]>> You know, I think about textbook knowledge as being pretty tried and true and not necessarily the thing that you read about in the morning on Twitter.

[00:08:07]This is a great example of the textbooks just haven't caught up with what we're learning about this virus. We do know the Andes virus has been responsible for some outbreaks that we've already heard about extensively. the Argentina one 2018. There was even an outbreak in hikers in Yusede in 2012, probably because they were exposed to rodent droppings in cabins. But this virus right now is teaching us unfortunately a lot more than what we knew already.

[00:08:35]We're really interested about this whole concept of transmission between asymptomatic people. It's now sounding like we're having people turn up positive who did not have symptoms um and are getting off the boat and presumably um were not spending time in the same cabin with the index cases. So again, a lot to learn and it's one of the reasons with very high mortality associated with this virus that we're trying to take appropriate precautions without freaking out.

[00:09:05]>> Yeah, that without freaking out I think is an important part of it. I I absolutely agree. I want to drill down more on what you make of how the repatriation of Americans has been handled so far given what we do know about how the virus spread specifically and what you just alluded to in terms of maybe this new information we're getting about what might be happening.

[00:09:25]>> Exactly. So my understanding is that everything has been handled or orchestrated as as your correspondent uh implied with really beautiful precision and care. I think that the people who organized the evacuation um were very very conscious of the possibility that there could be airborne transmission even with brief periods of contact again because we hope that's not the case but we really can't rule it out until we know downstream what the effects of contact were for these passengers. So my impression is that they did a very good job. They put people in bioontainment units from what I understand. And once they get here, one of the beautiful things about our preparedness response that's been built up over the last couple of decades is that we have facilities like those in Nebraska, which is a quarantine spot that you actually go to. We also have facilities that are set up to provide intensive medical care for people who require this kind of isolation. Those were started during the Ebola crisis and several others. So, we are really good in terms of having um scaled up those facilities. We just have to, you know, recognize that we don't really like to use them. They're insurance and you don't want to not have them when you really need them.

[00:10:45]>> And doctor, officials today kind of reiterated that. They said the risk to the public remains very low. Let's play something from one CDC official specifically about what they were saying, which is that the HANA virus is likely not going to spread to the general public. Let's listen to that.

[00:11:02]>> There are no guarantees in life. We're putting as many measures in place as possible to ensure that people are safe and healthy and we keep the community safe and healthy as well.

[00:11:10]>> No guarantees, but talk to us about those precautions and how officials are going to try to make sure that this virus is contained.

[00:11:17]>> Sure. So one thing that I think people should know is that in the health care setting for hospital workers, nurses, physicians, staff, there are very good precautions that we have used for many infectious diseases that work fine. So people should be confident if they are seeing patients as long as they use universal precautions. In this case, you probably want to go a little further, use an N95, you have to do that, should do that. Um that that it's safe to take care of these patients. So that that's important. In terms of the people who are exposed um and being um ushered into quarantine, the CDC did today release guidance for people who are considered high-risisk contacts and those are the people who are coming back. And some of the things they don't recommend, for example, is sharing a bed with somebody else, sharing personal items like toothbrush, that kind of thing, sharing food, sharing beverages, even attending social events or visiting crowded venues. So, all of those things during that period of quarantine, which we now hear is 42 days, are things that we're probably not going to want these folks to do. Again, it may be in an abundance of caution, but because that incubation period is up to 7 weeks and also because we're now seeing people with positive tests who probably were exposed more than a week or two ago. Um, again, we want to really exercise caution uh with these folks. Is this enough? I think it is. Right now, what is going to be concerning is if you start seeing tertiary cases of transmission, these are people who weren't on the boat.

[00:12:56]Okay? So, if we start to see somebody who was on the plane or on another plane from somebody who was on that second plane, I don't think it's going to go there. I think these chains of transmission are going to just die out.

[00:13:08]But again, it's a serious virus. No treatment, no vaccine. We want to be careful.

[00:13:14]>> Dr. Jeannie Morazzo, there's so much more to this conversation. Thank you for helping us understand a bit more about the virus today.

[00:13:20]>> My pleasure. Thank you.

[00:13:21]>> Thanks. We thank you for watching and remember, stay updated on breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or watch live on our YouTube channel.