Hantavirus outbreak: What you need to know

追加: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]People are getting really concerned.

[00:00:02]Health officials continue to monitor an American who tested positive for the Hantavirus after spending several weeks aboard that cruise ship where the whole thing started. The unidentified passenger was one of 17 Americans who left the ship in the Canary Islands on Sunday and boarded a medical flight arranged by the government. They've all been taken to a quarantine center in Nebraska for further evaluation. There they are with their things.

[00:00:29]Officials are continuing to monitor now a second person who was symptomatic.

[00:00:34]Mhm. Three passengers died since the Hantavirus outbreak began. And then of course there are the reports of the two people who are from New Jersey who were on a plane with and they were considered to be exposed and so there's concern about that. Dr. Sean Whelan is the director of the Penn Institute for Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania.

[00:00:55]Thank you for coming in. Thanks for having me back.

[00:00:57]>> you've been a busy human lately.

[00:00:59]>> There's a lot going on.

[00:01:00]>> Mhm. All right.

[00:01:02]This virus has been around a long time.

[00:01:04]Yes. But the the it is called the Andes strain? Correct.

[00:01:09]>> That is bad news. Yeah, the Andes strain seems worse than some of the other strains of Hantavirus, but lucky for us it's usually only found in South America until you have a cruise ship. Mhm. And that's the concern is trying to contain the folks who were on that cruise ship or those who were exposed. So and it sounds like the incubation period is that why they're holding them for about 40 days? Or what do we know about when to see cuz the problem was when they first found out folks went off this cruise ship and went to other places and they had no idea what we were dealing with. Yeah, that's right. Early on we didn't know what virus it was. We didn't know what was making people sick. So there really wasn't any reason to be concerned. Um the incubation period here is the thing we don't know much about.

[00:01:49]It may be as long as 6 weeks, but we don't know that much about the virus. So I think what you're seeing is people being extra cautious. We learned a lot of lessons. We need to be careful.

[00:01:57]>> it today, I might not show symptoms for 6 weeks. Yeah, again, there's there's not a lot of information. Um there are examples where people are exposed and then come down with symptoms 3, 4, 5 weeks later.

[00:02:10]>> Those are the symptoms?

[00:02:12]Yeah, uh it's a respiratory infection, high fever, headaches, uh vomiting, diarrhea, chills. Um it's a pretty, pretty bad infection.

[00:02:20]>> Why does it kill people so fast? Yeah, you get what we call a cytokine storm.

[00:02:25]Your immune system goes on hyperdrive and you start damaging your blood vessels specifically and you get hemorrhages, you get your lungs don't work properly and your lungs collapse and uh you see really, really bad symptoms.

[00:02:38]>> And of course, it depends on the strain, but what is the survival rate? Cuz some of them I've seen, it's a good survival rate. Others seem really quite concerning. It could be almost a 50/50 chance.

[00:02:48]>> Yeah, there aren't that many infections each year, so we don't really know, but probably about 30% mortality rate with things like the Andy strain and some of the other strains. So, it can be pretty bad. And how is it transmitted?

[00:03:00]What do we know about that?

[00:03:01]>> Yeah, so probably respiratory. As you initially get sick, you cough, you sneeze, you have, you know, runny nose.

[00:03:07]Um you can close contact and transmit the same way a lot of other viruses like flu or even COVID-19 get transmitted.

[00:03:13]>> Because in the beginning, some people were saying, "Oh, it's just close contact. If you're kissing or you know, sexual relations." But it really can be as simple as sneezing or coughing.

[00:03:20]>> Yeah, there's at least one example of a very short contact at a birthday party a number of years ago where someone just saying, "Hello." ended up getting transmitted with the virus. And is that why the folks the two folks out of New Jersey they're concerned? It's because they were on the plane and they might have been sneezing cuz a lot of folks we remember, even though I know they're saying it's not like COVID, but back in the COVID days they were asking people to wear masks, but then some people felt like once you're in the air, it's the way the air is circulating, it's fine.

[00:03:46]Should we be concerned on planes then?

[00:03:48]Yeah, I mean, I think the likelihood of being exposed is this point, there are only about a dozen people in the world that we have to worry about right now is pretty low. But yes, it can be transmitted by aerosol or by air on a plane close contacts or on a cruise ship where you're circulating with the same people over and over again. These are the places where you might see I'm flying tomorrow. Should Would you wear a mask if you were flying tomorrow?

[00:04:08]I probably would not.

[00:04:10]But you know, there are a lot of other viruses that you protect yourself from with a mask. So masks are not a bad idea overall.

[00:04:16]You know, this virus there are two people in the US that might be positive.

[00:04:20]>> [laughter] >> Are you concerned?

[00:04:24]I'm not right now. I would say that there's a lot we don't know and we need to be paying attention and we need to keep learning from what's happening. We may change and as we more information may change the way we think about it.

[00:04:35]Right now there are only a couple people in the US. They're being looked at very very carefully. So the risks are pretty low right now. But since there's that 6-week potentially 6-week incubation period, does that mean there could be others who've been exposed and we just don't know yet?

[00:04:48]>> Yeah, there could be. I mean we have the benefit this was a cruise ship. So it was very contained. We do have good tracking on who was there and we're doing this contact tracing now across the world.

[00:04:58]So it is still quite contained in terms of the number of people we have to track.

[00:05:03]If you had to guess pandemic or not?

[00:05:06]Likely not. We see these viruses year after year. They're things we know a little bit about and so they haven't shown a real strong ability to spread from person to person very efficiently.

[00:05:15]So I think unlikely but you know, we need more information. All right, get away from me.

[00:05:20]>> [laughter] >> Thank you so much. We appreciate you talking talking to us about this. God.

[00:05:25]There are some people even without viruses who would always wear masks anyway. I know. I think maybe I will.