Atlanta hospital on alert after cruise ship outbreak | FOX 5 News

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]But first an update tonight on the Hantavirus outbreak on the MV Haundius cruise ship. Thanks so much for joining us here on News Edge. I'm Christine Sperow. One of two passengers at Emory University Hospital tested negative for the Andes strain of the Hantavirus. News Edge reporter Christopher King talked with experts about what you need to know about the virus. Christopher is live outside Emory University Hospital for us.

[00:00:26]Christine, they are keeping a close eye on that patient here at Emory.

[00:00:31]The tonight we speak with an infectious disease expert. He says Hantavirus can be dangerous, but there's no reason to worry.

[00:00:41]It's not like COVID where someone coughs in the room and you get on the other side of the room. Dr. Robin Drattler says the Hantavirus is very serious. It can be deadly, but your risk of contracting it is very remote.

[00:00:56]>> Most of the time it is not person-to-person contagious. The Department of Health and Human Services reports a passenger showing symptoms of the Hantavirus tested negative for the Andes variant here at Emory University Hospital. Emory also watching a second passenger. They were both on board the MV Haundius during an outbreak. 16 other people on that cruise ship are being treated in Nebraska. It is from the rat and mouse droppings that somehow get aerosolized or ingested some other way. Dr. Drattler is a board director of the Infectious Disease Society of America. He says you must have sustained contact with an infected person who is showing symptoms to get sick yourself. Face-to-face for a while, a conversation at least.

[00:01:46]>> What is the possibility of this turning into an epidemic or even a pandemic?

[00:01:51]Very unlikely. Dr. Drattler says the symptoms can take time to show up.

[00:01:56]>> It has a up to 8-week incubation, so even if there was a point exposure, you're still going to have several weeks of the people popping up. Should we be worried here in Georgia about hantavirus?

[00:02:11]Not at this time. It would have to be very different than any other hantavirus we've seen.

[00:02:18]Now, family medicine practitioner Dr. Cecil Bennett tells us the mortality rate for people infected is about 35% and there is no vaccine, but he says there've only been about 900 cases nationwide of hantavirus over the past 30 or so years and that is very, very tiny in a nation of about 340 million people.

[00:02:42]We're live outside Emory University Hospital, Christopher King, Fox 5 News.

[00:02:46]>> Christopher, thank you for the latest.